Thom Yorke, the primary vocalist for Radiohead, will exhibit new work with longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood in September -- the latest example of the rock band's extensive ties to the art world.
It will mark the third exhibition of artwork made by the Radiohead frontman under Tin Man's representation. The duo exhibited artwork made for the covers of the albums Kid A and Amnesiac in October 2021 at Christie's in London and more than 60 drawings in a show titled Test Specimens in May 2022.
Also in 2021, Donwood and Yorke worked with longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, often called the band's "sixth member," on an exploration game published by Epic Games for the PlayStation 5 console based on the band's music and art.
The game was initially conceived as a physical installation of artwork that was sidelined by logistical problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Working on something as strange as this over long Zoom calls with a large team of technicians all around the world has been one of the strangest experiences we have ever had. Unreal in every sense of the word, especially within the months of almost total human isolation," Yorke and Donwood wrote in a blog post after the game's release."What we have made is... it's something like a mutant re-engineering of Kid A and Amnesiac."
Donwood and Yorke met as art students at the University of Exeter and Yorke asked him to design the cover for My Iron Lung, the band's 1994 EP. The artist has made the covers for every Radiohead release since, as well as for Yorke's other musical projects Atoms For Peace and The Smile.
But the band's ties to the art world extend beyond just Yorke and Donwood. The upcoming show also comes on the heels of an exhibition of paintings by the artist Stewart Geddes in collaboration with Radiohead drummer Philip Selway, which was exhibited by Tin Man in February 2023.
Selway and Geddes began collaborating together during the pandemic as the drummer was working on songs for his third solo album outside of Radiohead. Selway invited Geddes to make the cover art for the album, which developed into an entire series of paintings that were made jointly with the music.
"[Geddes] listened to tracks before Selway had added lyrics to them, but with the chord structures and melodic arcs in place," Tin Man said in a news release announcing the exhibit at Cromwell Place.
"And then he started work, painting with the canvases laid horizontally and raised slightly from the floor, the seep of the music into his mind echoed in the spread of acrylic paint across their dampened, unprimed surfaces."
Though Jonny Greenwood, the band's lead guitarist and keyboardist is not known to have exhibited any visual art, he is married to the Israeli artist Sharona Katan, whose work appears on the covers for his soundtracks to films such as Bodysong and There Will Be Blood.
And though Radiohead's Ed O'Brien seems to have no known individual ties to the visual arts, the guitarist has received much praise for his 2020 debut solo album Earth.
