Lucy Raven's video installation "Murderers Bar" (2025) has its European premiere at the Barbican's Curve gallery in London. The work documents the 2023-2024 demolition of four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, focusing on the destruction of the Copco No. 1 dam built in 1918. The film is the final part of Raven's trilogy "The Drumfire," exploring themes of pressure, release, and material transformation. It uses aerial photography, drones, lidar, and sonar animations to capture the river's reclamation of its course after the dam's removal, following decades of activism by Indigenous communities including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath, Hoopa, and Shasta Indian Nation. The exhibition also includes a new kinetic sculpture, "Hardpan" (2025), that physically manifests ideas of force and pressure.
This matters because Raven's work addresses a landmark environmental and social justice victory—the largest dam removal project in U.S. history—while deliberately avoiding documentary conventions. Instead, she creates an immersive, formally ambitious meditation on ecological restoration and Indigenous land rights. The Barbican's head of visual arts, Shanay Jhaveri, emphasizes that Raven's approach is built on deep research and collaboration with affected tribes, making the installation a significant contribution to contemporary art's engagement with environmental activism and post-colonial narratives. The work also showcases innovative use of gallery architecture, with a vertical curved screen that transforms the Barbican's distinctive space.