An Accessible Arts and Sydney Opera House screen commission.

Carve Crevice from Grace is a short film by artist Amanda Bennetts, which examines the capitalist ethos surrounding productivity and the constructed notion of usefulness specifically for those who live with disability and chronic illness.

In the film, Bennetts, who navigates life with multiple sclerosis (ms) and a rare muscular disease, places herself within the confines of an industrial worksite. Here, she is engaged in the deliberate, repetitive act of chiselling away at an imposing sandstone block a task rendered seemingly futile when juxtaposed with the relentless motion of an adjacent conveyor belt. The disproportion between the stone and the machinery underscores the ambiguous nature of her labour, raising questions about what, if anything, this exertion truly produces. Embedded within the perpetual rhythm of industrial machinery, this allegory challenges the viewer to reconsider the oppressive demands of efficiency and productivity in a system that constantly marginalises those deemed unproductive.

Adding another layer of complexity to the work is the artist’s narrative of redundancy within the capitalist framework first in her twenties with a MS diagnosis, and now again in her thirties following a latter rare muscular disease diagnosis. In a striking irony, Bennetts' professional background as an HR Workforce Planner in the mining industry, a role she naively believed would empower and support others, reveals the extractive nature of her role and the broader system. The position that once promised to shape and sustain human potential ultimately reflects the depletion of natural resources: the land and body commodified. Bennetts herself becomes a case study of the path she once charted, her film laying bare the dissonance between the humanistic pressures of 'a career' and the relentless, consuming demands of the industry she served at the expense of her body.

The artist acquired a miscut sandstone block—a seconds piece—from a landscaping business and intends to repurpose it in future sculptures and installation works.