Arguably, this summer’s most anticipated exhibition, This Is What You Get is the first large scale show to explore the visual art of Stanley Donwood, Thom Yorke, and the iconic images of Radiohead. Developed and curated with Donwood and Yorke, it looks back over 30 years of collaboration. With nearly 200 objects, ranging from the original paintings for album covers and digital compositions and etchings, to unpublished drawings and lyrics in their sketchbooks, expect unprecedented access to the workings of one of the music industry’s most creative collaborations.
Radiohead formed in Abingdon, in the mid 80s and Thom Yorke, brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway were signed to EMI in 1991. Their first single, Creep (1992), was an international hit before it reached a wider UK audience and its popularity has persisted through the generations. To date, the band has sold 30 million records. Although Yorke is best known as lead singer and songwriter of the award-winning band, he is also an artist, and further, has released music in his own name and as part of Atoms for Peace and The Smile. He lives and works between London and Rome.
His friendship and creative partnership with Stanley Donwood began at Exeter University where both were studying English literature and fine art. Donwood is an artist and writer who has exhibited all over the world. He has been the official artist of Glastonbury Festival for over 20 years and has worked with Radiohead since 1994, producing all album and promotional artwork and winning two Grammys. His paintings, drawings and prints address socio-political issues, often employing satire that draws comparisons to Hogarth, Insa and Banksy. The pair’s first collaboration was for the cover of Radiohead’s single My Iron Lung.
Organised chronologically, the exhibition showcases the great variety of their work and explores the evolution of images both for Radiohead’s album artwork, and Yorke’s musical projects outside the band. It opens with a floor to ceiling display of LP covers, each album accompanied by a collaborative visual art project: one image selected for a cover, others used on CD booklets, vinyl records, t-shirts and merchandise.
Experimenting with a great range of artistic materials, styles and sizes, Yorke and Donwood’s work has been concerned with landscape in the most expansive sense: cityscapes, suburbs, the countryside, moonscapes, dreamscapes, current events and psychic states; their visual worlds are evoked by each project’s unique sound, and offer an intense aesthetic and psychological experience of what it is like to live with anxiety over what we’re losing with our ecologically destructive lifestyles.
Throughout the exhibition, their workings are shown, in unpublished notebooks and sketches which have never before been shown to the public. There are pages and pages of lyrics, scribbled out and re-written in different versions. We are told that Yorke will take snippets of phrases or thoughts on pieces of paper, piled up in the recording studio to be grabbed at random when a piece of music needs a new idea.
The exhibition closes with newer paintings. These include The Smile’s A Light for Attracting Attention (2022), Wall of Eyes (2024) and Cutouts (2024).
During the pandemic and due to cancelled schedules, the artists were able to take the time to work side by side on the same canvas, in a small shed at Yorke’s home. Drawing inspiration from the Talking Maps exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries (2019-20), they created their most optimistic and colourful paintings to date and found these paintings lent themselves to being reproduced as large tapestries, woven in Brussels. These will also be shown in the Ashmolean’s permanent music and tapestry gallery.
Dr Lena Fritsch, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, comments: “The exhibition title is a line taken from Radiohead’s well-known song Karma Police (1997). It represents Stanley and Thom’s creative approach: direct, honest, poetic, dark, and sometimes comedic. Showcasing their unique artistic collaboration, this exhibition offers fresh views on the art of album covers, exploring the complex relationships between visual art, music, and text.”
The Bends (1995)
Having sneaked into the basement of Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital, they filmed a resuscitation dummy whose face was ‘like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously’. Back home, they photographed the film visuals on a TV screen, which resulted in the iconic, pixelated image that harmonised with the distorted feel of the album.
OK Computer (1997)
An example of how the artists played with early technology, the artwork was made on a computer with a self-imposed challenge: forbidding themselves from using the ‘undo’ function. Any mistakes had to be rubbed out with the eraser or covered with something else. Following this, Donwood moved towards painting at scale, working with acrylic and oil paint, charcoal and artex.
This is What You Get: Stanley Donwood | Radiohead | Thom Yorke
6 August 2025-11 January 2026 Ashmolean Museum
Open: Daily, 10:00–17:00
Tickets available at the Museum or online. There is also a fully illustrated catalogue available to pre-order from the Ashmolean shop online and the Radiohead Store for £30.00.
This is What You Get is curated by Dr Lena Fritsch, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ashmolean Museum and produced with thanks to TIN MAN ART and Radiohead. The artists are represented by TIN MAN ART.
