Lucy Raven — Widening the Lens

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Lucy Raven, “Deposition, Dam Breach 13,” 2024, sand, dirt, cement, saltwater, silk, wood and aluminum, (photo by Mark Waldhauser, courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery)

Projectors swing into position and spotlights dance off the walls as visitors enter the rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the world premiere of Murderers Bar, a 42-minute video jointly commissioned and acquired by the gallery and the Vega Foundation, an arts incubator. 

Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar, currently on view at the gallery April 18 through September 28, is the largest Lucy Raven exhibition in Canada to date and includes the video (named after an obstruction in the Klamath River), the kinetic installation Casters (2021) and Depositions (2022), five substrate images on silk.

The show is curated by former VAG CEO and executive director Anthony Kiendl.

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Lucy Raven, “Casters X-2 + X-3,” installation view at Dia Chelsea, New York, 2021, galvanized steel frames, stage lights, motors and control system (photo by Bill Jacobson Studio, courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery and Dia Art Foundation)

Now based in New York City, Lucy Raven was born and raised in Arizona. The American West, both in mythology and as a metaphor for discovery and exploration, is a familiar theme in her work. Process and progress, whether realized through natural elements such as pressure and force or human interference via machines and technology are key issues. Her goal, she says, “is to liberate the medium from the frame” by re-defining the form and function of the recorded image.

China Town (2009), for instance, features an open pit copper mine in Nevada, a smelter in China and finally the Three Gorges Dam along the Yangtze River where the ore now refined as finished copper appears as electrical wire. With Ready Mix (2020), she went to Idaho to film the process of turning crushed rock into concrete. With her two-part Demolition of a Wall series produced in 2022, she took a high-speed camera to an explosives range in New Mexico and captured the ripple effect high pressure shock waves had upon the landscape.

And now with Murderers Bar, the centerpiece of the current exhibition, she has photographed the systematic removal of a hundred-year-old gravity dam in northern California. Projected vertically on a curved, free-standing aluminum structure, itself a statement when coupled with bleachers and a chain link fence for viewing – “I was thinking of an outdoor venue, ballparks and drive-ins” – the video is accompanied by an evocative sound design composed by her longtime collaborator Deantoni Parks.

Raven’s pieces are not documentaries in the modern sense. There’s no voice- over narration to propel the story and barely any continuity. She focuses instead on individual elements relying upon abstraction and minimalism to make her point.

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Lucy Raven, “Murderers Bar,” 2025, production still from moving image installation (image courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery)

Thus, with Ready Mix (2020) a repetitive yet mesmerizing closeup of rock tumbling end over end on its way to being crushed speaks to the transformation of one material into another.  

Which takes us back to Murderers Bar and Raven’s penchant for innuendo rather than proclamation. Many thoughts come to mind: the storage of pent-up energy behind an immovable object (in this case, a dam), unleashed power when that restraint is removed or the ecological effect a violent rush of water will have upon the landscape. Raven chooses to wrap issues around form, hoping the presentation inspires, or as she puts it, “is open enough for other kinds of interpretation.”

Her approach reminds me of the National Film Board of Canada fly-on-the wall cine poems of the 1950s (such as Corral) when NFB filmmakers allowed events to unfold and the viewer arrived at their own conclusion.  

The exhibition includes Depositions (2024), five works on silk that Raven produced while researching Murderers Bar. Curious about what would happen when the dam was breached, Raven found a watertight chamber, built small dams out of soil and dirt inside it and stretched silk organza along the chamber’s sides and bottom. She then filled it with water. When the chamber was drained, the outflow left deposits on the silk, substrate paintings you might say because the images, reminiscent of a western landscape, were made without brushes, paint or human intervention.

Incorporating silk and earth into her work reflects Raven’s relationship with her subject matter. “I have an immovable relationship to the landscape,” she says. “It’s embedded in how I look at the world.” ■

Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar is at the Vancouver Art Gallery now through Sept. 28.

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