Stanley Donwood In Conversation: Drawn To Sound

Stanley Donwood In Conversation: Drawn To Sound
The Creative Collaboration behind Radiohead's Visuals

Fri 26 Sep 2025, 5.45pm-7pm

This event takes place onsite in the Ashmolean's Randolph Sculpture Gallery and online via Zoom.

Booking is essential. Tickets are £15 each.

Join artist Stanley Donwood and curator Natasha Podro for an in-depth conversation about Donwood’s long-standing creative partnership with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, which is the subject of the Ashmolean's new exhibition This is What You Get.

Donwood has shaped Radiohead’s iconic visual identity for over two decades. He created the iconic artwork for albums including OK Computer, Kid A, Hail to the Thief and A Moon Shaped Pool, as well as posters, stage visuals and collaborations with Yorke on solo projects such as The Eraser and Anima, and for Yorke's new band, The Smile.

The talk will explore how this creative partnership evolved in step with Radiohead's music. It will reveal unexpected connections between visual and musical creation, and highlight Donwood and Yorke’s shared willingness to embrace the accidental.

Donwood’s work spans drawing, printmaking, digital collage and text. The conversation will also offer insight into what drives his solo practice — from technique to theme, process to politics.

Stanley Donwood's many projects include the artwork for Radiohead’s records, an early cyber conference, depressing fly-posters, many short stories, a pulp-noir-thriller, a record company, book covers for JG Ballard’s novels, art direction for a film about nuclear weapons, the artwork for Glastonbury Festival, a book about holloways with Robert Macfarlane, art installations in Bristol, London, the Netherlands and Sydney, as well as exhibitions worldwide.