Elena Vereker

Director

Elena Vereker has built a rep­u­ta­tion as a unique artist con­ceiv­ing, devel­op­ing and pro­duc­ing mid/ large scale, site spe­cific, high impact artis­tic events. “It is vital to cre­ate expe­ri­ences that nur­ture, develop and expose excit­ing, inspired and cre­ative works for a city and its public.”

As a cre­ative direc­tor, Elena con­ceives dis­tinc­tive projects which present spec­tac­u­lar phys­i­cal and aer­ial the­atre com­bined with strik­ing instal­la­tions that engage artists, com­mu­nity and audi­ences in unfor­get­table ways. A grad­u­ate of NIDA (1997), she has worked for the past 12 years with com­pa­nies includ­ing; St Mar­tins, Play­box, Mel­bourne Work­ers The­atre, Next Wave Fes­ti­val, Ade­laide Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­val 1998, Gee­long Cour­t­house, West­Side Cir­cus and La Mama. Her large event cred­its include: Advent Cal­en­dar (Fed Square 2006, 2007, 2008 Green Room Award win­ner Best Direc­tion, Best Pro­duc­tion, Best Design), Human Momen­tum — a large bam­boo play­ground with aer­ial and cir­cus per­for­mance (Mel­bourne Fringe 2005, Com­mon­wealth Games Cul­tural Fes­ti­val 2006), The Moon Lantern Fes­ti­val Finale (2002, 2003), and as the cre­ative con­sul­tant for the aer­ial event ‘Colony’ set on the Vic­to­rian Arts Cen­tre spire Next Wave Fes­ti­val, (2002), Vic­to­ria schools spec­tac­u­lar SHINE (con­cept and direc­tion of sta­dium per­for­mance with 3000 per­form­ers at the Rod Laver Arena, 2001), Flamma Flamma (Assoc Direc­tor to Nigel Jamieson for open­ing event for Ade­laide Festival, 1998).

From 2004–2005 she was the Cre­ative Pro­ducer of the Mel­bourne Fringe Fes­ti­val, re-conceptualising the fes­ti­val to gen­er­ate new works for artists and cre­ate free, high pro­file events as a cen­tral aspect to the fes­ti­val. She went on to become the inau­gural Cre­ative Pro­ducer of Fed­er­a­tion Square Mel­bourne in 2007–8, where she cre­ated, directed and/or pro­duced more than 40 events includ­ing the iconic Advent Cal­en­dar, inter­ac­tive light per­for­mance instal­la­tion Dream­Seed — (a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kyota Taka­hashi engag­ing over 2000 stu­dents from Vic­to­ria and Japan) and 1001 Cranes where she received acknowl­edge­ment from the Mayor of Hiroshima for this work rep­re­sent­ing the ongo­ing global peace mes­sage against nuclear war.

In 2008 she co-founded Insite Arts as the Cre­ative Direc­tor and in 2009 she was the Cre­ative Pro­ducer of the out­door pub­lic pro­gram for the Bris­bane Fes­ti­val cre­at­ing and pro­duc­ing 11 large scale events.