Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood to show their Kid A drawings in London

Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood have announced Test Specimens, an exhibition of 60 drawings they made between 1999 and 2001, while Radiohead were making Kid A and Amnesiac. It runs at Tin Man Art, 8 Duke Street, St James's, from 25 to 29 May. Entry is free, booked in advance.

James Elwes, who founded Tin Man Art, says it is the first time the sketchbooks have been opened to the public, after the interest in the Kid A and Amnesiac works Christie's showed during Frieze week last October.

The drawings include workings of the Radiohead bear logo, Yorke's first lyric drafts for “Nude” and a cartoon of a sperm monster menacing witch monkeys. Yorke's Oh Shit and Donwood's Volcano Erupts - Hideous Scenes were shown with the announcement. The two drew in tandem, tearing pages out of their sketchbooks and swapping them by fax, and many of the drawings started in their dreams. There was just a lot of work. A lot of to and fro. A lot of sifting around the same things again and again until something spoke², Yorke says of those years.

Donwood, who met Yorke as a student at Exeter University in the 1980s, has made Radiohead's artwork since The Bends. What I was wanting to do at the time was utilise Radiohead's fame as a canvas to put our ideas as big as possible in as many people's faces as possible.²