An Artistic Display of Radiohead at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Well, it so happens that the whispers through the grapevine were true… Radiohead are making a return with a European tour! This November and December, for the first time since 2018, the band will transcend stages in Madrid, Bologna, Copenhagen, Berlin and London. Currently, to be in the running for some tickets, you must pre-register your details here before this Sunday the 7th of September. OK computer, time to go to ticket war.

As this news electrifies the music world, with long-time devotees ready to elbow past TikTokified Creep listeners for a ticket, a seemingly less competitive showcase of the band’s work is underway in Oxford and it's all about the album art.

As someone who loves to know an annoying amount of lore about certain bands, this exhibition certainly hit the brief. On the upper floor of the Ashmolean Museum, the display takes guests from era to era sharing the little stories and serendipitous slip-ups that led to some of the most iconic sleeves that sit on record store racks. Exploring the 30-year artistic collaboration between Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, who started out as English lit and fine art course mates at Exeter University, the exhibition starts at the beginning with the story of The Bends. In 1994, the pair first joined forces to design the cover of Radiohead’s single My Iron Lung and, in searching for an actual iron lung in the basement of Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital, they stumbled across a resuscitation dummy whose face was ‘like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony.'

After filming the dummy and photographing the distorted visuals from a TV screen, York and Donwood achieved the gaping-mouthed slumbrous character of The Bends whose sharp jawline and sallow skin became a notable image of the 90s alt rock scene. As you wander past a mounted print of the cover you enter a room of floor-to-ceiling record shelves filled with Radiohead art prints and LP designs. Above reads a *mildly* controversial quote from Stanley Donwood taking a subtle dig at art galleries (despite being pasted on the wall of one!) stating his thoughts that they’re “just intimidating, it’s not very democratic,” in comparison to record stores which are “full of all kinds of oiks. It’s brilliant.” He claims.

You then airily float from vinyl stacked walls to the icy, ghoulish land of the 1997 album, OK computer. The artwork itself was created on a computer and the two forbade themselves from using the 'undo’ button to fix a mistake. Instead, they had to either cover it with another drawing or attempt to erase it. Following this, the chilling theme expands on a larger scale with Donwood’s canvas paintings for Kid A—some of which eerily conceal violent scenes, inspired by Yugoslav war photography, by overpainting them with snow.

On an adjacent wall hangs a selection of typographic canvases similarly laid out to the cover of Radiohead’s 2003 album ‘Hail to the Thief’, with words communicating the world’s ecologically destructive lifestyles and morphing together to create a road map-like structure. We then turn our heads to a corner dedicated to the 2007 album, In Rainbows. For this album, Donwood was meticulously sketching an intricate drawing when he ‘spoilt’ the half-finished picture by spilling candle wax over it. It's this precarious paraffin that made the glowing tangerine splatter the backdrop of the cover’s rainbow-shaded superimposed writing.

Walking away from the exhibition, a fact I do find very cool is that Donwood would create the art in real-time response to whatever Radiohead was recording. As songs were developed by the band, Donwood would listen via live audio link or take up residence by the recording studio so that he could gradually work on the pieces to reflect the evolving music, rather than final product.

Later this month, on Friday the 26th of September from 6-7pm, guests can join Stanley Donwood alongside the exhibition’s associate curator, Natasha Podro, for an in-depth conversation all about how Donwood has shaped the visual identity of Radiohead from albums and stage visuals to posters and later projects in collaboration with Yorke.

Tickets are £15 each and available to purchase here. However, if you can’t make it over to the Ashmolean, the talk will be recorded and will be available on request from [email protected]

This is What You Get is running at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until the 11th of January 2026. Book tickets via this link from £8.10. Entry is free for Ashmolean Museum members.