‘The Crow Flies’: Works by Stanley Donwood And Thom Yorke

Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke's anticipated exhibition, "The Crow Flies," presents an intriguing assembly of artworks that stand as a collaboration between the artistic talents of Yorke and Donwood.

The exhibit serves as a platform to showcase a captivating collection of pieces that originated as co-creations for the album "A Light for Attracting Attention," from Yorke's band, The Smile. In addition to the artwork will be a number of hand-woven tapestries to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the album's release last year. So, in our usual fashion, we decided to ask Donwood a few questions about the processes and inspirations behind the artworks and what it’s like working with Yorke, in an attempt to understand the brain of the artist behind the artworks of “The supreme god of music’s” albums. 

​​What was your drink of choice for this series of work?

An interesting opening question. We started on a strange beverage which funnily enough I think is Australian. It's called Dirty Tea if I remember it right, but it's not dirty and it isn't tea; in fact, it's a mixture of powdered coffee and dried powdered mushroom. But we moved on from this unusual brew to chai, and in the evening we explored the new and mysterious world of non-alcoholic beers. All of this was punctuated by strong black coffee prepared in the Italian manner.

How long was the process to create this body of work?

Hmm. It was long. Or it wasn't. If you wanted to consider this question while taking the long view, the genesis occurred over twenty years ago as we began to explore a hazy, dreamlike (or nightmarish) realm of volcanoes, pylons, ice, surging storms and blazing infernos, which led to the work we made for the Radiohead record known as KID A. This sensibility has evolved (or mutated) since then, absorbing more and stranger facets as time passed.

So this was a background to an idea we had of exploring cartography and mapmaking when we began this particular project some time in 2020; Thom had a book of maps of all kinds from all periods in history and that was a kind of kick-start. We were particularly drawn to a series of incredibly detailed maps drawn by Harold Fisk for the US Army Corps of Engineers and to the maps drawn by the military of both sides in WWII, but the ones that were really fascinating and inspiring were those drawn by various Arab sailors and pirates during the Medieval period.

We created a number of map-like pictures, diagrams to reach somewhere wholly imaginary. And then, with no planning, without meaning to, we began to create images of the places you might see if you were to follow these cartographical fantasies of misdirection. This bit didn't take too long; the whole thing (so far) took about two years, on and off.

How did the loom and weaving get incorporated into the work?

Well yeah, that was my fault. Since I was a child I've been into the artwork that's been intricately embroidered onto the Bayeux Tapestry; but I'd never seen it in person, so when I found myself cycling through the Normandy countryside I stayed a couple of nights in the town of Bayeux and went to see the Tapestry. And well, it's incredible. It took me about as long to see it all as it would take to watch a movie, and I found it emotionally compelling in a way I didn't expect from a thousand year-old strip of needlework. It's an incredible work of art.

Anyway, I was going on about this, and I realized that the work we had been making, inspired as it was by maps from the Medieval period would lend itself brilliantly to the medium of tapestry, which is itself associated with art of that period - tapestries were used as wall hangings in castles, stuff like that.

The results are far more interesting, far better really, than I was expecting. The weave is able to show texture and subtlety in ways I didn't imagine. The tapestry is a treat for the eyes. The thing with a lot of the work we do is that most people see it as either a printed reproduction on a record sleeve or digitally, on a screen of some sort. It's kind of a shame, because the real painting - or tapestry! - is something else again.

Who does what in this collaboration, how does it work per piece?

Roughly speaking, Thom is more expressive and I'm more neurotic. Generally, but not exclusively, he's better at hills and meanders and I'm better at seas and tributaries. While making these paintings these roles were sometimes reversed. 

How is it to work with Thom after all these years?

It's weirdly more or less the same as it was in 1990 when we were at college. We just sort of chat and get on with it, sometimes disagree, other times agree. I'm not sure if this is true, but I've come to think that people are pretty much established as who they are by quite a young age. So I reckon that if I got along okay with someone when we were both eighteen it would probably work thirty years later. Unless they went all right-wing or something. Or I became a born-again religious type. But we've been lucky as regards that sort of thing.

How would you describe the process of creating the artworks for this exhibition?

The process of painting is quite introspective, and the level of introspection that it requires can make you pretty miserable. A blank canvas is a daunting prospect - pretty much anything you do to it will, initially at least, make it look worse than it does when there's nothing on it. And this goes on for quite a while. It just gets worse and worse, and more and more depressing. Pretty soon you start to doubt your ability to paint, to make art at all, and quite soon you begin to question the point of your own existence. After that, things start to go downhill. You're treading on very thin ice.

The best thing to do at this point is to just keep blundering onward, just in the hope that there might be some kind of light at the end of this horrible tunnel.This is probably why I like working with someone else, someone who has different opinions, different ideas and a new perspective; it really helps to have that. This is why art colleges are a good thing and why painting alone can be a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, I digress. I'm not sure which side of 'the process' to focus on here - there's obviously a quite mundane account I could give you regarding paint and brushes and that sort of thing, but what interests me is how we managed to claw our way from blank canvas (or linen) through the morass of despair that characterized the earlier days towards the realization that we had finished a painting. And, to be honest, I think it interests me because I have no idea how it happened.

What led you to choose the extract from the Ted Hughes poem as the title of the exhibition?

The name of the band - The Smile - comes from that collection. Because these pictures were made in the first instance to accompany the band's music, I ended up referring to them in my head as 'smile paintings' but that wasn't a good title for a show! So I went back to the name of Ted Hughes' book, and the character of the Crow. And the crow's flight is something we use as a verbal and mental shorthand, implying the shortest distance between two points. 'As the crow flies'. This is strange because if you spend any time at all watching crows in flight one thing they very, very rarely do is travel in a straight line. These guys are all over the place. So yeah, the title of the show relates partly to the name of the band and partly to our idea of mapmaking, of traveling by circuitous routes, of cartography being misleading and as capable of being as much of a misdirection as anything else. 

What’s your attraction to maps about?

I don't really know, but I don't think it's uncommon. Maps are intrinsically fascinating; from invented maps like rudimentary treasure maps (R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, for one) or fully realized fictional worlds (like Tolkien's Middle Earth) to the intricacies of the UK's Ordnance Survey maps, they're all intriguing; they are a mix of writing and art, of diagrams, detailed study and wide overview. And that's not to mention how important they've been throughout history for exploration and war. They can be for everything from navigating the seas to understanding the geological makeup of the Earth, from mapping out where the most drunks lived in Victorian London to understanding the rate of ice melt in Antarctica, there's a map for it. From the earliest scratched map on a rock to the latest satellite imagery - I would look at any of them and learn from all of them. 

What music do you listen to while you paint?

We listened to a lot of the compilations that Thom was putting together for Sonos and NTS, which was for me very interesting because I'd not heard of loads of the artists. We don't entirely share the same tastes in music because I fucking love techno and also some really questionable euro pop, but we concur on quite a lot. Some music I loved was by Abul Mogard, Kali Malone and Regis, but they're just the names I wrote down - there was (as you can imagine) a lot more! 

We also listened to The Smile a great deal because, although I can't prove it, I think that if you listen to something properly it will affect how you draw, how you paint - it will affect how you make art. I've found this to be the case for my whole life, ever since I had access to music of my own choosing. There's a direct effect that music has on our minds; it is the oldest and purest form of art. I don't think we are human without music.

Does the music you listen to affect the type of painting you’re doing?

Absolutely, yes. It's my opinion (although, as I said, I can't prove it) that music has a direct effect on how someone making visual art will express themselves. I would guess that if you were a schoolteacher and you were taking an art class you could test this. Give the kids a sheet of paper and a black marker pen, then put on some, I don't know, maybe some whale song, or anyway something really mellow and calm. A beautiful piano sonata perhaps. Ask them to draw how they feel. Then keep giving the kids new sheets of paper and put on new music; keep working through various genres, perhaps ending up with Death Metal or something. The results would be pretty compelling, I reckon.

If you're not an art teacher or you find the idea of testing out theories on children to be morally dubious then you can just try it on yourself, but try not to think about it too much. just go with it. Don't try to draw anything in particular, just make marks that express how you feel. 

Right on! Professor Donwood strikes again. What will part two entail?

Part Two of The Crow Flies will be exactly the same except completely different to Part One. There are the same number of works in each, but there will be no pictures from Part One in Part Two; and vice versa.

Will there be a surprise in Part Two?

I can't say, mostly because I don't know. We will see.

Stanley Donwood & Thom Yorke

The Crow Flies: part one

4 Cromwell Place, London SW7 2JE

6 - 10 September 2023