I had almost forgotten when I stayed at The Henry Jones Art Hotel in Hobart. It was before my travels were documented on Facebook, and the date had slipped from memory. I couldn’t even find the photographs I had taken. Then I came across an old blog post: a feature about Tasmania, published in April 2006.

The Henry Jones was one of my earliest encounters with an art boutique hotel. Opened in 2004, it occupies former waterfront warehouses and the old IXL jam factory, preserving sandstone walls and elements of the industrial architecture alongside contemporary design. The building’s previous life remains part of its character.

Its relationship with art went beyond choosing pictures to complement the furniture. Before the hotel opened, students from the Tasmanian School of Creative Arts were invited to explore the building and create work in response to what they found. Those pieces became the first artworks displayed in its hallways, connecting the site’s industrial past with the people imagining its next chapter.

Tasmanian art remains central to the hotel, offering travellers another way to discover the island through the perspectives of its artists. Staying somewhere like this allows for a different relationship with art, too: there is time to pass a work more than once, return to it and notice something that escaped the first glance.

Spending the night surrounded by artworks felt a little overwhelming, like wandering alone through an art museum after dark. It was exciting, but slightly unsettling too. The brushstrokes seemed to give off an energy of their own—sometimes warm, sometimes cold—and I became acutely aware of the artworks’ presence.

Looking back, I wish I remembered more: the room, the individual artworks, the details I would pay closer attention to today. I cannot name a particular painting from that stay. What remains is the discovery that a hotel could make art part of travelling, giving me a reason to look around even after returning for the evening.

I have stayed in many hotels since, but The Henry Jones still comes to mind when I think about where that interest began. Finding the old article helped place the trip in time. The photographs are still missing, though. I would love to see what caught my eye back then.

With thanks to Tourism Tasmania for inviting me to explore the island.