Mick Hartley

I wandered into the William Kentridge exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery on an off-chance: I happened to be in the area with some time to spare. Previous experiences with this particular gallery have not been good, so I wasn't expecting much – but yes, I was pleasantly surprised. It's rather wonderful. 

There are six large-scale installations, combining film and, sometimes, strange mechanical devices. The films are very much inspired by the early 20th century avant-garde – ie Dada, constructivism etc., with a heavily theatrical air. The mechanical devices tend to be surreal amalgams of the technology of that time: phonographs, sewing machines, typewriters and the like.

My favourite, I think, was at the end – O Sentimental Machine, with its echoes of the Hollywood silent era and those early surrealist films. It's based on Trotsky's 1929 exile in Istanbul. Happily, though, instead of surrealist-in-chief Andre Breton's lionisation of Trotsky, here the old revolutionary goat gets properly ridiculed.

And here it is, on Vimeo (best on full-screen, obviously):

William Kentridge | O Sentimental Machine (Channel 1 of 5) from Goodman Gallery on Vimeo.

To be exact, this is the main film, which faces you as you sit down. There are also four other simultaneous films playing out on the top panels of doors on the side. These are, though, just minor accompaniments – one, for instance, was of Trotsky speaking, with subtitles, and gradually being submerged underwater. This one here is definitely the main course.

"O Sentimental Machine" (2015), a five channel film and sculptural installation, was originally commissioned for SALTWATER, 14th Istanbul Biennial, where it was installed in one of Istanbul’s oldest hotels, the Hotel Splendid Palas. In a critique of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s notion that people are ‘sentimental but programmable machines’, subtitled videos of speeches by Trotsky and also his time in exile in Istanbul are projected on to glass doors on either side of the installation, offering the viewer the opportunity to observe what is going on behind the closed doors.

The secretary is delightful ("power to the serviettes"), with her typewriter struggles, her mirror scene – shades of the Marx Brothers - and her cod physical exercises à la New Soviet Woman. That's Kentridge himself, with the silly goatee and glasses, doing the revolutionary speechifying.

Reviews of the exhibition, if you're interested, from the Telegraph and the Guardian.