About Rebekah Farr
Biography
When I was 19, my passion for art and design took me to Australia to complete a degree in Fashion at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. I graduated and worked for two years doing Computer Aided Design for fashion, where I became fascinated by the possibilities of digital media.
I returned to university for a Post Graduate diploma in Animation and Interactive Media, which built upon my art skills with a greater sense of narrative and animation. I then co-founded Nectarine, a Melbourne-based interactive design studio, and have been director for the past decade.
Two years ago I returned to NZ with my partner and kids. We now live in Carterton in the glorious Wairarapa, and I’ve begun to rediscover my love of traditional art.
Shape and texture are an important part of my artwork whatever medium I’m working in. Currently the themes in my artwork revolve around my life in the Wairarapa.
Recent work
In 2007 I entered three works into the Fab Wai Art awards. I won a Highly Commended Award for “Northwest Wind” (oil on canvas), and sold two of the three paintings I exhibited on opening night. The works explore my fascination with the landscape, and how the howling winds affect both the land and the people within it.
Last year I exhibited a series of quilts called Regeneration Quilts made from 100% wool fabric, which was originally bought from the old Watson’s haberdashery in Carterton. The quilts were cot sized and used a very simple geometric modernist design to let the colours and textures of the fabrics sit together without intricate pattern getting in the way. I wanted to create something for a new generation out of this old fabric.
Over the past three years my animated short film Real World has been screened at over 20 international film festivals.
Real World combines plasticine, 2D and 3D elements to tell the story of a tiny girl who lives inside the model world of a real, life-size boy. She sneaks around at night planting flowers in his stark model world. A battle ensues as she plants at night, and he builds during the day. As the film progresses the boy starts to create structures that save her flowers from being squashed by his construction. A railway track takes a detour to avoid a single flower in its way. The film ends when the girl, exhausted from her night-time gardening whirl, falls asleep on the top of one of his buildings. He reaches down toward her, the shadow of his enormous hand crosses her body and he… picks up her tiny watering can and waters her flowers. The camera pulls back to show their collaborative work - a city covered in exotic, colourful, tropical flowers.
You can find out more about Real World here.
