Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke is co-curating a new artwork exhibition in London based around the band’s forthcoming reissues of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’.
The frontman along with Stanley Donwood, the artist behind the artwork of the band’s album covers, will host the exhibition from October 9-15 dubbed ‘How To Completely Disappear’ at Christie’s headquarters in the capital.
Donwood is selling six large-scale paintings he created for ‘Kid A’ alongside drawings, lyrics, and digital art made around this era in the band’s history.
The paintings will be offered online with bidding from October 5 to 19 beginning at £10,000. You can view the paintings below.
We are thrilled to partner with @radiohead @thomyorke to present artworks by @StanleyDonwood who has created the cover art for #Radiohead's ground-breaking albums since The Bends in 1996. The paintings will be offered this October in First Open: Post-War and Contemporary Art. pic.twitter.com/MSOaR7lTYh
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) September 20, 2021
The series of dystopian landscapes were made in the period 1999-2001, and closely related to the final cover and sleeve art for ‘Kid A‘.
In a statement ahead of the the upcoming show, Donwood said: “Very late one night Thom and I were alone in the vast wastes of Oxfordshire, surrounded by darkness and trying to finish the artwork. It was impossible – we had made too much, too many pictures, and it was like being in a storm of ideas and drawings, paintings, and texts.
“We were exhausted and could no longer think clearly. We had lots of versions of the front cover, all with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. We couldn’t work out which was the right one so we took them all downstairs and used tape to stick them to the cupboards and the fridge in the kitchen, hoping that in the morning the right cover and the right title would be obvious. And it was called Kid A.”
Earlier this month, Radiohead and PlayStation announced a new ‘virtual exhibition’ themed around the band’s forthcoming reissues.
Details were scant about the release, but PlayStation described it as “An upside-down digital/analogue universe created from original artwork and recordings to commemorate 21 years of Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’. Coming in November 2021.”
A triple album ‘KID A MNESIA’ reissue will be released by Radiohead via XL Recordings on November 5.
Two art books by Yorke and Donwood cataloguing the visual works created during the ‘Kid A’ / ‘Amnesiac’ era will also be published on November 4.
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