Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar

The exhibition Murderers Bar, curated by Anthony Kiendl with Siobhan McCracken Nixon at Vancouver Art Gallery, takes its name from a newly commissioned work—the last chapter in a series of moving image works called “The Drumfire” by New York-based artist Lucy Raven. The work Murderers Bar (2025) features a single-channel video projected vertically on a sculptural installation in the gallery space. Created through 2023 to 2025, the video centers around the recent removal of a century-old concrete gravity dam along the Klamath River in Northern California—the biggest dam removal project in American history. These depictions provide the action and context for a meditation on ideas of a broader scale and duration: Geologic and human-imposed forces, pressures, and changes of material state, especially as they relate to cycles of violence in the centuries-long transformation of western North America both literally and symbolically in the popular imagination.

Lucy Raven (born 1977) is originally from Tucson, Arizona. She lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 2000, and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2008. Her work has been exhibited in solo presentations at Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2025); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2024); Remai Modern, Canada (2023-24); Wiels, Brussels, Belgium (2022); Dia Chelsea, New York, USA (2021); Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2016–17).

Co-commissioned and acquired by Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vega Foundation.

Presented as part of Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver April 18 to September 28, 2025. This was the world premiere of this work.

Photos: Courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery, Lisson Gallery and the artist.