Feast your eyes on a new world where art forms meet. Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke: Maps of the New World showcases new work by two good and long-standing British artists, who continue to inspire each other.

Fine Arts and Music

Artist Stanley Donwood (1968, Essex) and musician Thom Yorke (1968, Northampstonshire) met as young art students. Since 1994, they have collaborated on numerous artworks, online projects and iconic album covers for Yorkes band Radiohead, his solo projects and his new band The Smile.

New work acquired

In 2023, Donwood and Yorke presented a new series of artworks made with various materials and executed with different techniques. Some of these now have a home in the Bonnefanten's collection. They can also be seen on the record covers of both albums by The Smile: A Light for Attracting Attention (2022) and the most recent Wall of Eyes (2024).

Magical world

The artist duo drew inspiration from 15th-century sea maps of Arab pirates and topographical surveys of the US army from the 1940s, among others. In their artworks, Donwood and Yorke use some typical elements of maps, such as wind roses, winding rivers, mountain ranges, lakes and craters, but also abandon this logic. Their first experiments led to a fantasy world; now they depict the wondrous things that can all be seen there.

No strangers

Donwood and Yorke are no strangers to the art and music world, but certainly not to Bonnefanten either. In 2017, Donwood painted the museum's inner tower with the dazzling black-and-white mural Optical Glade in four weeks. Thom Yorke added, for the "optimal experience of the mysterious and almost sacred space", a sound composition.