Tasmanian hotel takes art to heart
Artistic creations and those who produce them are central to the ethos of Hobart’s Henry Jones Art Hotel in south Australia, writes Jim Darby.
When are you a local? When do you finally belong to the place you inhabit? It is probably a two-way street: part of it depends on the views and acceptance of those who came before, and part of it depends on your own state of mind.
Artist Jeewan Suwal calls Hobart home but confesses that on one day he might think ‘‘I belong to this place’’, and another he might think ‘‘oh, I’m not from here’’.
The landscape is everything in his art. Look up from Hobart’s city and suburbs, and the average eye will see kunanyi/Mt Wellington looming above, an old mountain weathered and worn by the years. But when he sees it, and regards its dominance over the city, he says it reminds him of Annapurna, the mountain he grew up with in Nepal.
At 8091 metres, Annapurna ranks as the world’s 10th-highest peak, whereas at a modest 1271m, kunanyi is a long way down the list. But for Suwal, it is all relative. ‘‘In Kathmandu, we had the mountains all around and, in Hobart, we have the mountains all around.
‘‘But when you see Mt Wellington from Kingston, it is a different figure from when you see it from the city or from Glenorchy. So we can call it one thing, but it is always changing, so you draw it from the perspective you have.’’
Suwal paints abstract landscapes, often with hints enough to show the site, such as the Wrest Point tower at Sandy Bay, or the colourful cottages of Hobart’s New Town.
‘‘Every moment the light is changing,’’ he says, and so is the experience of being in a landscape.
‘‘The lifestyle, the Tassie lifestyle is constant, but the weather is always changing, the temperature, the rain, the changing sky. Sometimes I forget I’m in Tasmania.’’
He grew up in Nepal on a modest farm, and studied art in India, encouraged by a father who saw his son’s artistic talent, and made his way to Australia, eventually settling in Hobart with his young family.
Suwal has twice been artist in residence at Hobart’s waterfront Henry Jones Art Hotel, and also has his work exhibited at the hotel. It takes the concept seriously, setting the artist up in the foyer where they can work away, interacting with guests and visitors.
As Henry Jones’ art curator Tina Zucco says, many hotels display art ‘‘and why wouldn’t they? There’s so much wall space’’, but as far as she knows, this is the only hotel that employs an art curator.
As well as effectively being a working gallery – the lobby, hallways and walls are adorned with art from a rotating selection of more than 400 works at any one time – the hotel is home to arts programmes, and gives a platform to local artists.
That includes the Henry Jones Art Prize and finalists’ exhibition, the Artist in Residence programme, rotating exhibitions year-round, and tours of the hotel’s permanent collection. Among it are works from the famed John Glover collection in the hotel’s Landscape Restaurant & Grill.
The $20,000 Henry Jones Art prize for emerging artists was established in 2018; this year, more than 100 pieces have been submitted, with entries judged by an independent panel who narrow that down to 40-60 works for the finalists’ exhibition, and select the winner. As well as the prize money, the winner also has the opportunity to have a solo exhibition at the hotel.
In its role as a working gallery, the hotel becomes a home for artists like Suwal, who can ‘‘show my journey and how I arrived’’.