Stanley Donwood talks new exhibition and dealing with Radiohead

Radiohead artist Stanley Donwood has spoken to NME about his new exhibition Sacred Cartography, in addition to his hopes for the way forward for the band.

Sacred Cartography, which opened at London’s Jealous East gallery yesterday (Thursday November 24), is a choice of screenprints showcasing Donwood’s fascination with maps and panorama, as followers first would have skilled within the paintings for Radiohead’s 2003 album ‘Hail To The Thief’.

“I’ve all the time been curious about very outdated stuff,” Donwood advised NME. “After I was a child, I used to be fascinated by all of the outdated burial mounds and chalk figures and unusual unexplainable stuff littered across the panorama – the relics of individuals from a very long time in the past. Like Stonehenge the place you simply don’t know why they did what they did.

“I began engaged on the concepts of maps a very long time in the past round 2003. I ended up utilizing these very vibrant colors to color abstracted maps for a Radiohead document [‘Hail To The Thief’]. I’m nonetheless utilizing the identical colors to do that work; that are all derived from the petrochemical trade. So what I’m doing is a bizarre conjunction of the traditional and the trendy.”

To create the work, Donwood defined how he began off with Ordnance Survey maps which present all particulars of a panorama, photocopied them, then used correction fluid to “excavate them” by eradicating phrases, numbers then something from latest centuries.

“I am going again and again to seek out myself digging into the oldest elements of the panorama, that are normally discipline boundaries, hedges and outdated observe strains. I find yourself with this historical patchwork of outdated routes from once we have been bodily hooked up to the remainder of Europe,” he continued. “So I’ve acquired my map with a favorite characteristic like a stone circle or a hill fort, then I exploit these actually brash colors.

“I’m actually within the relationship between the land and the sky as effectively as a result of I believe the folks again then had extra of an animism than a faith. They most likely appeared to the solar, the celebs and the moon, so I’ve tried to attach every discipline with the infinite blackness house by letting the color leak.”

The artist defined how this exhibition, very similar to his sleeve for Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s new band The Smile’s acclaimed 2022 album ‘A Mild For Attracting Consideration’, exhibits off his extra extra “cheerful and vibrant” somewhat than “the extra melancholy, gloomy, black and white stuff” of his different work.

“I’ve tried to maneuver away from that,” he defined. “The world hasn’t gotten any much less dystopian or miserable; it’s gone the opposite means. After the coronavirus state of affairs, I believed, ‘Jesus Christ, the world has sufficient to fret about with out me including to it with a load of miserable footage of doom’. So I’ve tried to lighten the fuck up a bit, nevertheless it’s tough to shift the behavior of a lifetime. Folks like color. I not too long ago wrote ‘color sells’ on my wall.

“I’ve been doing for a very long time with these landscapes that leak color into the sky, however The Smile stuff could be very completely different. Thom and I have been working in a really small studio and ended up engaged on the identical portray on the identical time. It’s much more egalitarian now. It’s not very combative and appears to work fairly effectively. He’s excellent on the hills and I’m excellent on the sea.”

Donwood has made the paintings for each Radiohead and Thom Yorke document since 1994.

Requested what it’s about his work that’s so tightly spiritually certain to the music of Thom Yorke and Radiohead, Donwood replied: “I don’t know, Jesus! I don’t know something about music, which could assist. ‘I just like the sound of that’ or ‘I don’t just like the sound of that’ is in regards to the restrict of my musical understanding.

“For a very long time, Thom and I’d work alongside one another or virtually regardless of one another. We’d work on the identical factor for some time then we’d take activates an image. I’d normally win and take over and it grew to become mine as a result of he doesn’t have as a lot religion in his talents as an artist as he does as a musician; which is truthful sufficient as a result of he’s fairly good on the outdated music!”

And what’s his favorite Radiohead or Thom Yorke associated paintings that he’s created?

“I don’t know,” Donwood replied. “I all the time favor the newest factor, so I actually like The Smile stuff in the intervening time. ‘In Rainbows’ was additionally fairly good as a result of it was the other of what I used to be aspiring to do. I like the way it all labored out ultimately, regardless that it wasn’t going to.

He continued: “It was the very first thing we did post-record label. We might do what we needed, and it was this loopy thought of creating a package deal that was price £40 – which I believed was a fucking loopy thought on the time however now that’s the factor. There are all kinds of high-priced variations of releases popping out now.”

With The Smile at the moment in full swing, drummer Phil Selway set to launch a brand new album in 2023 and guitarist Ed O’Brien having loved success together with his acclaimed solo debut ‘Earth’ again in 2020, many followers are inquisitive about when or if the band would possibly return. Earlier this 12 months, O’Brien mentioned “there’s no Radiohead in the intervening time” and that future exercise “would possibly occur” or “won’t”.

Requested if he knew if Radiohead would possibly return within the not-too-distant future, Donwood mentioned: “I don’t know. No person tells me something! I’m simply down right here in Brighton staring on the sea, ready for his or her two-tone limo to start out driving alongside the coast highway for me to get in and do no matter they want me to do. I wouldn’t wish to speculate.”

Is there something he’d nonetheless like to see Radiohead do?

“The one factor that I all the time thought could be superb could be a reside document, however the issue is that they’re by no means all been completely happy sufficient with the identical reside recordings,” mentioned Donwood. “I actually preferred the reside information I’ve had of different artists like Bowie. They’re so good since you really feel such as you’re there! I don’t know what we’ll do subsequent.”

So we gained’t see a twentieth anniversary celebration of ‘Hail To The Thief’ subsequent 12 months?

“Jesus Christ, no!” answered Donwood. “The twentieth anniversary of ‘Child A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ was the killer. If we stored doing that we’d be on a treadmill, then you definitely’d do the fortieth anniversary, then you definitely’d be useless. It will be too grim. I’d somewhat do one thing else.”

Away from Yorke and Radiohead, Donwood’s work has additionally develop into synonymous with the posters and merchandise of Glastonbury pageant, and he advised NME he’s eager to get began on the imagery for 2023.

“The primary time I went to Glastonbury wasn’t for the pageant,” he mentioned. “I cycled down from Essex to Glastonbury, which took weeks, after which camped on the facet of the Tor and met all these travellers and witch-type folks.

“I’d identified about Glastonbury Tor and the mythology of all of it earlier than the pageant, then I went to the pageant as a pupil beneath a mattress at the back of somebody’s van.”

Donwood grew to become pals with the Eavises by way of probability assembly via a household buddy earlier than he beginning making t-shirts for the Worthy Farm bash again in 2002; permitting him to check out new concepts.

“It’s very completely different from a lot of the work that I do as a result of it’s not miserable!” he mentioned. “The one from final 12 months is on this exhibition, of Glastonbury Tor and with all the sector patterns that the pageant takes place on. That was going to be the paintings for 2020’s pageant, however then that didn’t occur.

Waiting for Glasto 2023, he revealed: “I’ve acquired an thought of what to do that 12 months, however I’m undecided if it’s going to work. I’ve been very fortunate with my so-called profession as a result of I’ve by no means needed to work to a short and I simply do what feels proper on the time.

“I haven’t seen the line-up, however with yearly that passes I do know much less of the folks on the line-up! I’ve to test if I’ve acquired the spelling proper or in the event that they’ve acquired bizarre accents on them. I used to know all them however know I’m like, ‘Who? What?’”

Donwood’s new exhibition Sacred Cartography runs at Jealous East in London till December 23. Go to here for extra data.