Stanley Donwood/Thom Yorke, Logical Absurdity at Tin Man Art, 9 Cork Street, London W1 –  Back into town again, go west once more for the east is just not delivering at the moment, back on the Lizzy Line to Bond Street, back to Cork Street via the the just opened Hank Willis Thomas exhibition at Peer and a late afternoon exploring of some of the new shows at Flowers, Kearsey & Gold, Stephen Friedman Gallery, it has been a couple of weeks wince we were last in the street, more of all that later though, the reason for the rush in on the Lizzy Line was last night properly private preview of Logical Absurdity  

Logical Absurdity is the latest exhibition to come out of a now thirty-year artistic collaboration between Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood. For three decades now, the pair have worked together, creating a vast body of visual material for Radiohead’s album covers, books and other projects, a visual relationship that has continuously evolved a relationship that has recently seen them start to paint together, co-creating works on canvas, loosely around the notions of landscape, and most recently a rather intriguing departure into tapestries. This new exhibition upstairs at Number Nine features a series of screen prints, linocuts, lithographs and new acrylic paintings by Donwood aesthetic), “a suite of co-authored paintings and tapestries by Yorke and Donwood” and a rather fine almost positively naive painting called If I Ever Get Out by Tom Yorke.

There’s a reasonably large Lithograph hanging over there (76x76cm), certainly a little larger than an album cover, a piece that will be immediately familiar to those who have been exploring the latest album from Tom Yorke’s other rather rewarding band The Smile – indeed this review or whatever it is, is being written in the cold light of the afternoon after the night before back here in my own painting studio while January’s Wall of Eyes album, the first of two excellent albums The Smile put out this year, is being revisited. Actually the exhibition and the less pressurised flow of The Smile do fit well together and it is good to see the collaborative piece on a gallery wall rather than just as the cover of the excellent Cutouts album (an album that I rather expect will be featuring prominently in our end of year lists in about a month’s time). The art in Logical Absurdity isn’t so dark this time, not so stark, it seems to come from a more relaxed place or at least, even if there is a volcano or two, to have come together in a more relaxed way? Are volcanoes relaxing? 

This is a strong exhibition, it hangs together really well as one body of work, an ongoing body of work, it isn’t that easy to see who has done what without referring to a catalogue, they clearly are informing each other in rather positive ways, creative journeys through “analogue mediums in an increasingly digital world”. Those two big Stanley Donwood paintings, A Lesser Evil and Dark Forces, both 120cm square acrylic on canvas pieces, both painted this year, both sharp, both strengthened by the rich contrast of bold colour, both intriguing in a rather different way, an unreal very real way, actually that might just be the overall feel in here, a slightly unreal very real feel. Topographical? Tales from a what?  

There’s some beautifully stylised Stanley Donwood prints on the walls, delicious pieces, while those collaborative tapestries certainly arouse curiosity, there’s something fascinating about them, about where they might me going, where the two of them might have been to come up with what can be read into them.  You do wonder how responsive the collaborative pieces are, who reacted to who’s move, was it like writing a song, a tune, a dance? A logical absurdity? How synchronistic it was/is, I’ve always seen painting as a very personal almost lonely thing to be doing, a private thing until the time comes to (sometimes reluctantly) reveal. This is an intriguing show, there’s that word again, intriguing, an intriguing show for many reasons, an an intriguing show to read, in some ways a surprisingly strong show… (sw)      

This is a two week exhibition running from 29th November until 14th December 2024 The show will be open Tuesday through to Saturday, 10am until 6pm, full address is 9 Cork Street, London W1 3LL – Smack bang in the middle of the street that is full of galleries and (usually) plenty of rewarding art

Read Nico Kos Earle’s essay on the exhibition here or visit www.tinmanart.com

As always do please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show (although you will fine more formal imagery on the Tin Man website