San Francisco, FIFTY24SF Gallery, Over Normal, 2 September - 27 October 2010
Catalogue Essay
"Both Donwood and Radiohead were hitchhiking around the UK, busking their respective acts, and eventually ending up meeting when looking for a place to crash for the night. ‘When you’re hitchhiking and fire breathing you can’t stay at fancy hotels,’ he explains, ‘So we stayed on the same floor.’ […] Donwood has since designed all of the band’s artwork and merchandise, creating Radiohead’s artwork and merchandise, creating Radiohead’s disquieting, often sardonic, visual universe. His art – punchy, precise and political – is about the contemporary anxieties that should prevent us from going to sleep: the reach of government violence, the numbing necessities of technology, the suicidal unsustainability of our lifestyles, the seductions of advertising, and the accidental moments of beauty in all this dysfunction." (from I. Cortez, Stanley Donwood: Against Apple Zed, 2010 – see pp. 48–53 of this catalogue)