Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood's protest painting sells for £5,000

Business School For The Dead, a canvas Thom Yorke painted with Stanley Donwood, who has made Radiohead's artwork since 1994, sold for £5,000 at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on 3 July, against an estimate of £3,500 to £4,000. The sale was in aid of the Trade Justice Movement, in 2005 part of the Make Poverty History campaign.

Yorke and Donwood painted it in five hours at Wake Up to Trade Justice, the movement's all-night protest in Westminster in April 2005, the night Yorke first played “House of Cards”. The acrylic canvas, signed by both, is about ten feet tall and has a vertical tear in it.

When Bonhams put the lot up in mid-June, Yorke posted a link to it on Twitter. Hope someone in the financial industry buys this, what a novelty to have a painting at auction ha!¹