Sun Valley Museum of Art

Lucy Raven’s solo exhibition Level Distance is now on view at Sun Valley Museum of Art, Idaho, bringing together three bodies of work from her multimedia project The Drumfire (2020–2025). Taking the genre of the Western as its point of departure, the exhibition examines the forces of pressure, destruction and material transformation that have shaped the landscapes of the American West.

Working across film, photography, drawing and sculpture, Raven explores the physical and lasting effects of human intervention in the natural environment. Her works trace the impact of blast testing on the Western deserts, examining the movement of shock waves through moving image, photograms and drawings, alongside sculptural works that respond to the removal of dams along the Klamath River. Through these different processes, Raven considers how landscapes are continually reshaped, while questioning the photographic and moving-image technologies that have historically documented, surveyed and mythologised the American frontier.