The UK’s Kent County Council is promoting off a piece of its artwork assortment on Tuesday (10 March), together with a cache of prints by Tony Ray-Jones, a key determine in postwar British pictures.
The public sale options 168 tons originating from the Kent Visible Arts Mortgage Scheme (KVALS), and consists of an early work by the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, a lithograph by Australian artist Sidney Nolan, and a major archive of 33 images by Ray-Jones, many depicting public festivities and native traditions throughout the county.
The Reform-led council says the gathering has been saved within the basement of County Corridor in Maidstone and now wants to maneuver. “As a result of lack of viable different storage choices and in gentle of the numerous monetary pressures going through the county council, no appropriate alternate options have been recognized,” a spokesperson tells The Artwork Newspaper. Nevertheless, the council admits that the works haven’t been supplied to any of the county’s museums or galleries. The authority additionally faces a extreme funds deficit, and Reform has but to ship tax cuts promised forward of profitable management of Kent in final spring’s native elections.
The council had not responded to a request for touch upon the explanations for promoting the work, or whether or not they or a earlier administration initiated the sale, by the point of publication.
“The disposal of great pictures and different art work [from public collections] is all the time a priority, particularly when it consists of uncommon work from figures similar to Tony Ray-Jones—considered one of Britain’s nice documentary photographers and an inspiration to luminaries such because the late Martin Parr,” the pictures historian Michael Pritchard tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Kent’s short-term monetary acquire can be on the long-term cultural expense of Kent residents and guests.”
Forward of an earlier sale of works from the gathering, held at Sworders Nice Artwork Auctioneers in July 2025, the council stated that an unnamed artwork historian had suggested that the objects on the market “won’t characterize any official historic worth however are nonetheless attention-grabbing”. That sale included works by established artists together with Norman Ackroyd, Victor Passmore and Anthony Gross, lots of which illustrated city and nation scenes from round Kent. The online revenue was £29,060, says the council spokesperson, which they are saying was put in the direction of a “Tradition and Inventive Economic system Service income funds“. The Artwork Newspaper has requested extra particulars of the funds.
John Brazier, who was the pinnacle of arts and museums at Kent Council from 1990 to 2005, takes a unique view. He acquired the Tony Ray-Jones images which are within the sale, after an exhibition that toured the county within the late Nineteen Eighties. They have been purchased to be a part of the KVALS—arrange for the lending of labor to colleges and workplaces—and have been saved in correct archival amenities in a transformed hangar at RAF West Malling, a former Royal Air Pressure station. The scheme, nonetheless, was mothballed at the very least a decade in the past.
“They don’t know what they’ve,” says Brazier. “They will solely see them by way of financial worth, which [unlike cultural worth] tends to not be an enormous quantity. The worth of getting the work in Kent is a superb deal greater than the worth of flogging them off.”
Ray-Jones, who was born in Wells, Somerset, had native connections, having spent early childhood within the Kent city of Tonbridge, and plenty of of his images within the sale depict public gatherings from across the county, similar to Might Queen celebrations in Chatham, a Dickens pageant in Broadstairs, and a magnificence contest in Margate. All have been taken throughout a two-year interval within the late Sixties when the photographer launched into a significant mission documenting the English at leisure. The collection, A Day Off, was posthumously printed by Thames & Hudson in 1974, two years after his demise on the age of 31. A number of photos from A Day Off seem within the Sworders public sale on 10 March, and a quantity are included in a present show at Tate Britain, Trendy and Up to date British Artwork, which runs till 17 Might.
“His work helped elevate documentary pictures into the realm of British artwork,” says Nicoletta Lambertucci, the curator of Trendy and Up to date British Artwork at Tate. “It continues to resonate as a useful cultural file of a society in transition, made all of the extra poignant by the tragically brief span of his life and profession.”
