Jessica Mauboy

2018
David Rosetzky

gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned on paper (frame: 106.0 cm x 150.0 cm, sheet: 103.5 cm x 147.5 cm)

Jessica Mauboy (b. 1989), Darwin-born singer, songwriter, and actor is a descendant of the KuKu Yalanji nation of Far North Queensland. As a girl, she sang with her mother and father and in a church choir with her grandmother. At the age of fourteen she won a singing competition at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. Two years later, in 2006, she captured national attention as the runner-up on the television program Australian Idol. Having signed to Sony Music Australia, she has so far achieved music sales over 2.8 million units, five top 10 albums, fifteen top 20 singles, four ARIA-accredited platinum selling albums and two ARIA Music Awards. Globally, her songs have been streamed more than 185 million times and her videos have been viewed more than 45 million times. She made her film debut in the Australian film musical Bran Nue Dae (2009); for The Sapphires (2012) she received the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award and the Australian Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2016, Mauboy became the first Indigenous woman to achieve three consecutive weeks at number one for her album The Secret Daughter: Songs from the Original TV Series. In 2014, she became the first non-European solo artist to perform at the Eurovision Song Contest in Denmark. Frequently characterised as a role model for young Australian women, in 2015 she became an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and in 2018 she was named an Australian tourism ambassador.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Commissioned with funds provided by Sony Music Entertainment Australia 2018
© David Rosetzky

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Audio description

2 minutes 29 seconds
Show transcript

This is a black and white photographic portrait of Kuku Yalanji nation descendent, performer Jessica Mauboy created by David Rozetzky in 2018.

It is 106cm high and 150cm wide, encased a two and a half centimetre black frame.

The background is black and the portrait is glass-covered which creates a cool, reflective surface, the black has a matt quality, appearing soft and velvet-like.

Occupying the centre of the picture, Jessica Mauboy is captured from the top of her head to upper thigh. She is standing turned to the right, her left shoulder to us. She wears an unusual shawl-like, cropped jacket that suggests movement, like she has just this moment stopped dancing and turned her direct gaze to the viewer.

Jessica is a startlingly attractive young woman; her long hair has blonde highlights and falls past her shoulders in a textured mane. Her centre-parted hair covers some of her high, wide forehead, fanning out onto her shoulders to frame her face. Her arresting, unflinching gaze leaps out of the portrait from dark, rounded eyes beneath thick, sculpted eyebrows. She has full, closed lips, flawless cheeks and a rounded chin.

Jessica’s long hair ends at her breast, she wears a low-cut black dress with a tight little frill along the v of her cleavage.

Her deconstructed shrug sits across her upper arms and shoulders. Thick, woven, beaded strands form a riot of uneven, messy tangled lines, hanging off her left shoulder and down her arm, over the bunched sleeve of her dress that ends at her elbow. The shrug is structured around her neck, short and curved along the line of her breast. Collectively the beaded strands sparkle white against the blacks and greys of the rest of the layered photograph.

The photographer has chosen to add to the impression of recent movement in the picture as there is a figure beside her, separating from her torso, bursting out behind her. Also Jessica, with her body arched backwards, her long hair swaying down her back, nose to the sky with eyes closed as though dancing and absorbed in an internal world. It’s a blurry image, captured mid-motion. The beads on the second figure’s shrug are just a blur, light, loose smudges of hair and tassels descending in different directions.

Audio description written by Meredith Hughes and voiced by Carol Wellman Kelly