With long, honey brown dread-locks that flirt with the small of his back, striding tall in fatigues and a crumpled white shirt, sporting Celtic tattoos, he would probably be more in sync in a jam session on the beaches of sunny Jamaica rather than the cold lobby of a suburban five star hotel. But that’s Andy Fairgrieve for you. Global Curator and organiser of Glenfiddich’s Artists in Residence programme, Fairgrieve is a drummer by passion who loves to explore and photograph abandoned underground bunkers from the Cold War, in an old bus with a canine for company.

If you’re wondering how a rastafarian look-alike rocker came to curate one of the most evolved art programmes sponsored by the world’s leading single malt whisky brand, Glenfiddich, Fairgrieve has the answer. “Whisky is a creative lubricant; whether you think of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, who wrote about his love for women, freedom and whisky, or even rock and roll, how many musicians do you know who don’t enjoy whisky?” .

For whisky to be involved in art is not a huge leap, he believes, since whisky is a cultural product. Glenfiddich started the art programme because they wanted to refresh the brand and make people think of the brand in a different way. So the idea behind the Artists in Residence programme was to create a new set of associations for the brand. People assume Scotland is about heather and weather, shortbread, bagpipes and kilts, but there’s a lot more and we wanted to break cultural stereotypes,” he says.

Art Apart. But the 129-year-old brand deliberately chose not to engage with conventional art. “People came in to the gallery at the Glenfiddich site, expecting to see a Victorian view of Scotland. But we presented them with something conceptual to make them reappraise. One of the most clever attitudes of this programme was to make people rethink and reimagine,” he says.