Formica

The title of the work, Formica, speaks both to the work’s insect motif – formica is Latin for ant - but also to the 2-dimensional nature of the projection screen – Formica is also a kind of decorative laminate surface. This is Grennan’s second video installation work commissioned specifically for the Kingston Art Centre’s Bridge Space. Following on from the first project - which transformed a dilapidated 3rd story pedestrian corridor into a virtual swimming pool - this work continues to explore the residual meanings of the corridor as a liminal, in-between, or non-space. The new work seeks to again reply aesthetically and poetically to the site’s external setting dominated as it is by the heavy commuter traffic along the Nepean Highway. Scale is central to the work. In Formica, Grennan constructs a scaled-down Perspex replica of the walk-bridge, and with the help of Patrick Honan and Museum Victoria (where Patrick, an entomologist, is head of live exhibits), he populates the corridor with live Bull Ants. The work records these colossal ants as they negotiate the non-space of the corridor and fulfil their metaphorical roles as standardised commuters. With nowhere to go, however, the ants subvert this assigned role and exhibit far more nuanced and individuated behaviour as they investigate, probe, prevaricate, dawdle, or preen idly as though performing some insectile version of Waiting for Godot.