See the Abstract Artworks That Defined Radiohead’s Iconic Visual Style

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A new exhibition explores the artistic collaborations between Thom Yorke, the rock band’s frontman, and artist Stanley Donwood, his longtime friend

Christian Thorsberg

– Correspondent

August 12, 2025 1:36 p.m.

In the late 1980s, Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood were students at the University of Exeter studying fine arts and English literature. Yorke’s rock band, Radiohead, had only played a few local gigs. Meanwhile, Donwood (his professional pen name) was still better known by his real name, Dan Rickwood.

But their lives would soon begin to change. Donwood embarked on a successful art and writing career, while Yorke and Radiohead became global sensations following the release of the band’s debut single “Creep” in 1992. Three decades and nine studio albums later, the group is known as one of the world’s most influential rock bands.

Though their journeys diverged, Yorke and Donwood remained friends and routinely collaborated with each other, merging their mediums and exploring new ones. In addition to creating cover art for Radiohead’s singles and albums, the duo worked on etchings, digital compositions and drawings.

Now, more than 180 of these artworks—including paintings, sketchbooks and handwritten lyrics—are on view in a new exhibition, “This Is What You Get,” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

“The exhibition title is a line taken from Radiohead’s well-known song ‘Karma Police’ (1997),” Lena Fritsch, the exhibition curator, says in a statement. “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 exhibition presents a chronological timeline of Radiohead’s aesthetic and Yorke and Donwood’s partnership. Some of the first items visitors will encounter are the cover art paintings from Radiohead’s 1994 single “My Iron Lung” and its second album, The Bends.

To create the album, Yorke and Donwood famously snuck into the basement of an Oxford hospital to film the face of a resuscitation dummy. “I don’t know how we got in,” Yorke tells BBC News’ Martin Eastaugh. “We weren’t supposed to be there.”

“It’s brilliant … to have the chance to trace the throughlines in each of Yorke’s and Radiohead’s albums,” writes the Independent’s Roisin O’Connor in a review. “These are studies in loneliness, of willing solitude and punishing exile.”

Founded in 1683, the Ashmolean is known for its extensive archaeology and art collections. But despite the museum’s reputation, Yorke and Donwood hope their free exhibition will be seen as an accessible space.

“It was years before I could go into a gallery,” writes Donwood in the exhibition’s introductory text, per the London Times’ Jonathan Dean. “They’re just intimidating, whereas a record shop is full of all kinds of oiks.”

The build-up to the exhibition’s opening has included an interactive advertising campaign on the streets of London. Organized by creative agency Anything Is Possible, the campaign features limited-edition posters placed around the city for anyone to tear away and keep. Beneath the posters, passersby will find black-and-white images of the Ashmolean logo and exhibition title.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Anything Is Possible to bring Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke’s extraordinary and era-defining creations out of Oxford and into the beating heart of London,” Phil Brooks, marketing manager for the Ashmolean, tells Marketing/Beat’s Tom West.

Radiohead has a long history of sharing its art for free. The band famously released its 2007 album In Rainbows—which has since been certified platinum in the United Kingdom and Canada, and gold in the United States, Belgium and Japan—on its website, offering fans the option to pay what they wanted to download the music.

“I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one,” Yorke told Time magazine’s Josh Tyrangiel in 2007.

Today, the band’s website, titled “Radiohead Public Library,” serves as “an official online resource containing everything we, Radiohead, have ever done, more or less.”

“This Is What You Get” is on view at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford through January 11, 2026.