You can tell a tree’s age by counting its rings. But there are more stories hidden in wood than just the passing of time, and whole histories are spilling out of the timber in Vietnamese-born Danish artist Danh Vo’s central London exhibition.
It starts with Robert McNamara. He was the American Secretary of Defence from 1961 to 1968. It was him who pushed for increased American involvement in Vietnam. It was him who helped set that war’s wheels in motion. He died in 2009, but his legacy lived on. His son Craig now owns a farm, with a walnut orchard on the property. Vo and McNamara’s son started corresponding a few years ago, and when the orchard was cleared recently, all the wood was given to the artist. Now it lies here in a London gallery, stacked high against the walls, waiting to be transformed into something new, waiting for new histories to be written with it.
The raw, untouched timber occupies the main space. It has a strong aroma, an almost incense-like odour that fills the gallery. It’s dark but its shades vary. Some of it was destined for furniture, some of it for guns. Upstairs, a workshop converts the wood into chairs and tables, a constant process of reshaping and renewal.
Sure, the whole installation is a bit like a high art version of a Homebase, and there are complex ideas about functionality and craft at play here, but the important bit is simpler than that. Written into the very material you see all around you is the history of the world it has witnessed, the biography of the man who owned it, the narrative of the colonial occupation of Vietnam and the war that followed it. It’s all there in the burls and knots of the timber. That wood is Robert MacNamara legacy, the man who helped start a war that would ruin countless people’s lives. Now the wood belongs to someone affected by his actions, and he’s letting it become something else, letting it grow into new forms.
It’s the opposite of Vo’s terrible current South London Gallery show (you wish he’d done this there instead, really), an utterly brilliant marriage of idea and aesthetic. It’s a simple, direct premise with an affecting, unforgettable execution.
Don’t just count the rings, read the whole story, because this wood has an awful lot to say.
