Crack

A task as hard as attempting to visualise Radiohead’s genius would defeat all but the most gifted before even the chance to start. As the man responsible for packaging Radiohead’s spiralling, multi-layered and often disturbing discourse in pieces of artwork however, Stanley Donwood has succeeded where most else would dare not tread.

Having created all their album artwork (except Pablo Honey), as well as Thom Yorke’s solo album, Donwood’s images have become iconic symbols in their own right; running in tandem with Radiohead’s progression. From the pre-millennium tension of OK Computer to the colourful sedation of In Rainbows, each is very much an individual creation, and exceedingly thought provoking.

Donwood’s answers to Crack’s questions come across as tension-filled and slightly unstable. Here is someone who doesn’t just sit in his comfort zone. Transposing the fragility of our world into his own character, the two become entwined; spat back at you in a series of pieces that go beyond Radiohead itself.

His latest exhibition, El Chupacabra, has no connection with Radiohead. It depicts a series of feral goats dressed in capitalist attire, leering from behind a veil of dripping coloured paint; predominantly red. They are genuinely unnerving. Translated literally as ‘goat sucker’, El Chupacabra was a legendary creature rumoured to scour the Americas, murdering livestock and draining their blood. Lifted and given clothing befitting of the financially carnivorous ‘suckers’ of today, it’s hard to ignore the emphatic message portrayed.

Taking themes of modern living, civilisation, government, war, isolation and throwing them back at you with a twisted slant, Donwood’s commitment to traditional method and his dislike of computers gives his work even more of a raw edge than already suggested. Here lies a potent artist, whose concerns with our world translate into pieces of relevant art work that people will love and relate to for years to come.

Many of your pieces contain an apocalyptic theme. Is this something of which you are conscious in the creative process?
“I've no idea why people pick up on the 'apocalyptic theme' thing, because I don't see it at all. We are part of a species that has infernal weapons pointed at each other all the time. These things could easily obliterate all of us, and we've lost a whole load of them. We don't know where they are.

"We've taken storage of carbon in the forms of oil, coal and gas from deep in the earth and burnt it all in the last couple of hundred years, releasing it into our atmosphere. This is fucking up our climate and much more besides. It's a unique event in geological history. We know this is bad, but we don't want to stop making money out of it.

"We have developed a form of energy that creates waste so toxic that it will be deadly for millions of years, but we don't know where to keep it. We have ridiculous escalating wars all the time because we can't agree which abstract being is running the universe.

"We are blindfolded idiots with Kalashnikovs and constantly twitching fingers. Things are not going to get better. They are getting much, much worse. So it's not really an apocalyptic theme. It's just reportage.”

Another theme in your work is how conditions affect people. In a number of your pieces there are armies, maps, graves and houses en masse (Salaryman, Xendless). Do war, government and the ordinary man play the biggest part in your work? If so, what fascinates you about these themes?

“Nothing fascinates me about them. Everything terrifies me about them. I'm a huge fan of civilisation. I think civilisation is the greatest achievement of the human race, ever. I mean, it's brilliant. Running water! Sewers! Electricity! People doing things for others; the whole thing. I even like the whole ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ manners stuff. But it's like an apocalyptic Laurel and Hardy film; it's not 'if' we're going to fuck it up, it's 'when'.”




The current climate is one in which your work becomes increasingly relevant. For example the single word messages prevalent on the artwork for Hail to the Thief (Pacific Coast) deploy concerns of modern living. Do you ever see a time when these concerns will lessen?

“I would really like it if I was happy, but I think that's an impossibility. It's simply unattainable. Being happy is the end of a fairytale. I'd like to be free of concerns, but I think the only way to be like that is to be dead.

"Strangely, all of the words used on Pacific Coast are noted down from signs and adverts I saw whilst being a car passenger in Los Angeles; every single word except 'grand guignol' - which was also the first to be painted. The picture almost painted itself. I was trying to paint a landscape of a hill I saw in Dorset. It only ended up as the cover of the record at the last minute.”


El Chupacabra (Crack suspects) depicts capitalist bankers and or MP's laughing despite being covered in blood. Do you see your artwork challenging these people in these conflict filled times?

“I don't think so. I can't see the board of RBS buying El Chupacabra. Though if they were to express an interest, I'm sure I could offer a highly incentivised package!”


What is your opinion of bankers and MP's? Are there any you would have round for coffee?

“Hey, any of them could come round. Must remember to keep the ground glass well away from the sugar though, eh? No, I actually think they do a very hard job extremely well. They are nothing like feral carnivorous goats.”


Which Radiohead album artwork and series of pieces are you most proud of?

“I'm not really 'proud' of anything I've done. The word, for me, conjures up some grinning twat making sure that everyone in the room has noticed his achievements. I'm pretty pleased with some of my work - most of it, perhaps.

"I thought the work for In Rainbows was quite beautiful in the end; in a rather grim way. I do the best I can, but after time has passed, I can't help finding flaws and wishing I'd done things a bit differently.”


How closely are Radiohead involved within the creative process?

“I think they'd tell me if I did anything really shit. Actually they did once - when I wanted to do this pornographic topiary. Oh well. Someone'll want that idea, maybe.”


Did it annoy or give you any kind of satisfaction when the album booklet in Kid A featuring a demonised Tony Blair, was pulled from the album by the “Powers That Be”? (I was annoyed because my partner in crime has one and I don't)

“It was pulled because of that? No shit! I thought it was an EMI cost-cutting thing; you know, saving a bit on printing and paper costs. The Bastards!”


What is your opinion on the relationship between visual art and music?

“Music's the first art, and drawing's not as important. I think that making music of some kind is a deeply human urge, an almost atavistic compulsion, whereas drawing is somehow less vital, less urgent. It’s unusual for visual art to have the kind of visceral power that a lot of music possesses.

"Having said that, I’m completely unmusical, so I only know how it works one way round; music can very definitely inspire, influence and affect a visual art process, though how overt that process is I can’t say.”


In what way does music play a role in inspiring your art?

“I try to let it in. It is harder than you might think, to immerse yourself, but it definitely works, though the word I'd use isn't 'inspire'; it's more of an influence. It's like peer pressure; you start out thinking that you're responsible for your own actions, but actually you'll just do what the cool kids are doing.”


What are you listening to at the moment?

“Nothing. I'm completely alone, a long way from anywhere and I'm extremely unsettled. There were some strange sounds earlier. I went to investigate and it was the refrigerator that was making the inhuman gurgling sounds that I'd been hearing. I am terrified of being alone. I would like at least a cat to be here, but there's nothing at all. There are some 'flowers' in a vase, but they just sit there, like fucking triffids.”


Could you talk us through your creative process? Do you combine traditional printing methods alongside digital manipulation?

“If I have any kind of creative process I'm unaware of it. I think that digital manipulation is quite boring; you know, moving a mouse around and clicking it every now and then.
Computers are strange parasites that extract our abilities to move things around and prevent us from remembering how to do things that once seemed quite simple. It's kind of weird that I like printing and painting and drawing, now that I think about it, it's quite a childish impulse to get mucky, to smear paint or whatever on a surface, but it generally makes me feel better.
"After a day moving fucking pixels around with a fucking mouse I mostly want to run fast into a wall. Traditional work, etching or relief printing, or painting and drawing; they're interesting tasks, they're physical, with smells and textures and no stupid 'undo' function.
"I really hate that 'undo' thing on computers. We should have the courage to fuck up, scribble it out, and do it again.”


I read somewhere you hated suburban living. What particularly annoys you about it?

“God, I wonder what I said? I was in a kind of nihilistic frame of mind a couple of years ago and I said all kinds of things. I suppose mainly suburban living is an unsustainable experiment in living that ultimately has no future, predicated as it is on an endless supply of cheap oil. But also it's just really boring.”


Is the future still really bleak, or is there any light at the end of the tunnel? If so, where is the light coming from and where can we find it?

“There is no light after the tunnel. There is tunnel after the tunnel.”


Can you talk us through the inspiration for your written work? Particularly the number of short stories that appear on your Slowly Downward website.

"The truth is that when I was younger I suffered terribly from nightmares, and by a series of accidental experiments I found out that they went away if I wrote them down. It's as if the horrible power of a nightmare is most concentrated within a single mind; I think that's why people have such an urge to tell people what's happened to them in their sleep.
"So anyway, I wrote these awful dreams down. I was perhaps a little crazy. I thought that the nightmares were real, that what happened in them was as important, or equal to, what happened to me during the day.
"I was really worried. I wrote them, but, you know when someone tells you their dream, it's just... really, really boring and I thought that was maybe because people try to frame their dreams in some sort of narrative; but there is no narrative. It's just fucked up. So I wrote them out as short as I could, and published them. The more people that read them, the less chance that I will have nightmares again. It's working, you know.”


What did you especially like about the Weapon of Choice Gallery to house the El Chupacabra exhibition there?

“I was hoping to get some of Banksy's punters in, if the queue for his show was too long, or something.”


What's next Mr Donwood?

“I'm expecting a disaster any time now.”



http://www.slowlydownward.com/

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