Annette Sax is the owner of the Aboriginal education centre, Yarn Strong Sista, as well as a pretty fab fashion designer who uses natural pigments and materials in all of her designs. We chat to Annette about her recent stint working as the costume designer for THE HUM by The Australian Ballet, an upcoming dance performance that celebrates the land and the collective, shared experiences of emotion, knowledge and energy, as well as how she connects her craft to Country.

Hiya! Please introduce yourself and a little bit of what you do. My name’s Annette Sax and I am a Taungurung artist, fashion designer and the business owner of Yarn Strong Sista, an Aboriginal education consultancy.

What are your main inspirations? My family and Country are my main inspirations as well as the natural landscape, where I spend a lot of my time. Whenever I travel onto Country I'm always looking for natural materials and pigments for me to collect. I’m always inspired by our animal kin, especially birds, and creation stories. These are all integral elements to the design work that I am able to do.

How did you first start your career? Well, I actually have a background in early childcare and I’ve been working in Aboriginal education for 30 years, alongside great people such as Iris Lovett-Gardiner and Sue Atkinson. It was during that time that we really wanted our children to see themselves reflected in books and dolls and puzzles, so I started designing Aboriginal children's toys and games and now have been for 22 years!

How would you describe the connection you have with Country and costumes? My connection with Country and costumes actually comes from the work that I've been doing in fashion years before my work with costume design. My work with Daniel Riley, the artistic director at the Australian Dance Theatre, has led to so many great discussions about the how the dance costumes should reflect and move like the natural environment such as waterfalls. I also screen-print the physical, natural pigments like ochre and charcoal onto the fabric of the costumes, and I believe that the dancers all have made a connection with their costumes because they all hold the spirit of Country.

Talk to us about your work with THE HUM. The connection to the land has such a strong presence in the show, with the ground-up charcoal screen-printed onto the costumes being from burnt bark collected off the ground from an 800-year-old Eucalyptus tree. It’s important to me that the costumes not only reflect Country, but also the individual personalities of all the dancers too. We all love the colours of crimson, purple and lilac, so you’ll see a lot of those in THE HUM.

How would you describe your own artistic journey? Well, I first started off drawing Aboriginal design using black pen on Japanese paper and now I paint with natural pigments found right here! What I love doing is working with other First Nations people and artists, and uplifting their work even through hard times with constant political unrest, natural disasters and the lingering effects of the global pandemic.

THE HUM will be playing at Arts Centre, Melbourne from June 16 – June 24.