As you enter the sculpture Untitled (Bycicle Wheel II)  hints at themes that will reappear again, the bycicle wheel, the conical megaphone, the use of shadows.  Despite being a retrospective of works from 2003-2016 of South African artist William Kentridge these pieces can all be seen as linked because he explores big themes and uses certain motifs again and again in his works, including himself always in his monochrome outfit. Together with some large tapestries and a reading room with his books this major retrospective shows five performative works.

The first and most spectacular work is The Refusal Of Time (2012) a five screen installation with a large, wooden, mechanical breathing machine in the centre of the room which he worked on with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh, Dada Maslow and based on a conversation with science historian Peter Galison  about discoveries of time, light, string theory and more. On screen we see video of metronomes, drawings created and undone, space, the artist (see main image) and Dada with others dancing on sets and in silhouette while Miller’s soundtrack leads us through. Time in all considerations is explored in just 30 minutes, from time spent doing routine things, to rhythm, to breathing, to the strings at the edge of black holes quivering with information reflected in the artists line, to the universe as the ‘universal archive of images of the past’ where all past acts on earth are being viewed thousands of light years away. And simultaneously to this grand concept of time the films also speak to themes of apartheid, family dramas, national dramas, the movement of people, more. Probably every viewer will end up absorbed and exploring  a personal mass of thoughts as this vibrant and energetic piece picks them up and takes them on a journey.

Second Hand Reading (2013) is a very tender 7 minute video of animated drawings on pages of the encyclopaedia using his repeated motifs to explore self, thought, transformation, struggle and is accompanied by Neo Muyanga’s beautiful soundtrack.

Right Into Her Arms (2016) is a mechanised theatre on which both drawings, video and text play the roles and tell the tragic, of course, story of a femme fatale in Vienna.  Most surprising was the moment the two moving panels were suddenly transformed into characters in the story – literally planks of wood giving us character and emotion.

7 Fragments for George’s Melies, Day for Night and Journey to the Moon (2003) is a 9 screen installation of video and animation using stop motion, time-lapse, reverse motion and other film techniques.  It’s a homage to French filmmaker Melies but also to the artists drawings especially where the images are magically undone and though we know the film has been reversed it can’t undo the skill of the line we see.

O Sentimental Machine (2015) is based on Leon Trotsky’s exile from Russia in 1929.  We see a secretary on the main screen taking notes from Trotsky or from the megaphone.  Trotsky (played by William) is seen making his pronouncements as his secretary types or indulges in her eccentric exercise regime, as guns fire, wheels turn and the dictator is slowly immersed in rising water. Politicians drowning in their own rhetoric perhaps? Also visible are the turn of century cameras around the back of the screens highlighting the beginnings of the critical role of film media in political life.

The whole show is an intense mash up of drawing, music, theatre, film exploring everything from technology, language, relationships, politics and more.  Time spent here is not thick; it’s clever, thought-provoking, entertaining  and it passed quickly.