Lucy Raven's video installation "Murderers Bar" (2025) has its European premiere at the Barbican's Curve gallery, chronicling the 2023-2024 demolition of four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California. The film focuses on the destruction of the Copco No. 1 dam, built in 1918, which devastated local ecosystems and salmon populations vital to Indigenous communities including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath, Hoopa, and Shasta Indian Nation. Raven's work, the final part of her trilogy "The Drumfire," uses aerial photography, drones, lidar, and sonar to capture the moment of release as water rushes toward the Pacific, followed by the transformed landscape. The exhibition also includes a new kinetic sculpture, "Hardpan" (2025), which physically manifests themes of force and pressure.
The exhibition matters because it brings a landmark environmental and Indigenous justice victory into a major European art institution, using experimental film rather than documentary to explore themes of ecological destruction, activism, and renewal. Raven's focus on material states of change and her innovative use of the Curve's vertical space highlight how contemporary art can engage with urgent socio-political issues while pushing formal boundaries. The work also underscores the growing role of artists in mediating complex histories of land, water, and Indigenous rights for global audiences.