★★★★★
This Is What You Get, the new exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, showcases thirty years of artwork, music and early lyrics: the esoteric musings of Thom Yorke, frontman of Radiohead, The Smile, and Atoms for Peace, and his long-time friend and collaborator Stanley Donwood.
Well, it’s worth getting the conflict of interest out of the way. The Ashmolean Museum could have had an empty room with an attendant occasionally whispering “Radiohead”, and I’d still have loved it. That said, the exhibition is an incredible tribute to the greatest band of the last three decades, and if you take anything from this review, let it be a strong imperative to go and see it.
Taking its name from the chorus of ‘Karma Police’, this exhibition has everything a Radiohead fan could want to see, and holds substance for those less infatuated with the band as well. It acts as a journey through the band’s history: memorabilia from The Bends era is displayed near the start, while the exhibition finishes with stunning, full-scale artworks from A Moon Shaped Pool and The Smile’s three albums. Along the way are various pairs of headphones playing songs like ‘There There’ and the exciting bit from ‘Paranoid Android’.
I didn’t quite realise what I was getting myself into until I saw a notebook with early drafts of lyrics to ‘My Iron Lung’, from what would have been around 1994 by my best guess (it probably specified when, but I was too busy fangirling). If you’ve had the pleasure of playing through the Kid A Mnesia exhibition (a free virtual art gallery experience), you will recognise many of the sketches in the game around the walls. They’ve even got the Sperm Monster.
The album artworks are accompanied by information on Donwood and Yorke’s creative inspirations, with lots of bonus information for those interested. For example: Hail To The Thief, their 2003 album, was originally going to be graced with phallic topiary in a National Trust garden before that idea got shut down. Some of the art itself is preposterously large. Seeing Hail to the Thief’s wall of text blown up to its original size of over 2 square metres was incredibly bewildering, given how frequently I handle the standard 12-inch albums during my DJ sets (which I am frequently told contain “too much Radiohead”, if that’s possible).
Taking in all of the early drafts and alternate concepts for the covers really instills an appreciation for the creative process behind these pieces of art, and just quite how much goes into producing what many people will never see beyond a 1-inch square on their phone screen. I’ve already got tickets to go again at least three times (it’s free for Oxford students, so make the most of it while the exhibition is there) and I’ve got no doubt that I’ll continue to find new things to love each visit.
I left, somehow, with an even greater sense of admiration for Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke than I entered with, matched only by the great sense of monetary destitution I felt after making my way through the gift shop. They’ve got a tiny printing press that you can use to make your own oil print memorabilia – I walked away with my very own Modified Bear. Overall, the exhibit is well worth your time, taking no more than an hour at most (even if you stop to look at everything, like I did). It’s really cool. You should go see it.
This Is What You Get is on at the Ashmolean Museum until the 11th January 2026. Tickets can be found here.
