Terroir of Memories
In February 2026 The Studio gave its walls to Quỳnh Anh Lê, a Hanoi-based painter, for two evenings and a hundred guests.
The exhibition was made with Duncan Taylor's Octave programme, and it carried a whisky of its own: a fourteen-year-old Auchentoshan, triple distilled, finished in Palo Cortado sherry octaves. Delicate and mineral — soft red berries, a gentle sweetness, a herbal finish, and a chalky texture running through it. Chosen to sit beside the work rather than in front of it.
Eighty-eight bottles were released, each label carrying a different fragment of the flagship painting and numbered in sequence. Arranged together, the eighty-eight labels reassemble the whole canvas. Members bought them on the night.
One bottle was painted by hand, live, during the exhibition. It goes to charity auction, to build a school in Vietnam — the first of three by three Vietnamese artists, to be auctioned together when the series closes.
A second work, “Inside the Cask”, was made for the exhibition: the view from inside a maturing cask, the dark interior where whisky slowly becomes itself and no one is watching.
Two evenings, two sessions a night, twenty-five to thirty guests at a time. An exhibition opening rather than a party.
Doors at four. Guests were met in the Library Bar with the first cocktail and given time to move through the room before anything was asked of them. Canapés came round shortly after.
At half past, Quỳnh Anh spoke in The Studio — the exhibition, her practice, the collaboration — for twenty minutes or so. The whisky was introduced after her, with a small pour for every guest and the thinking behind the second pairing, which arrived twenty minutes later.
Then live painting, and the artist available to talk to for the rest of the evening while the limited edition was open to members. The hand-painted bottle stood on display as it was made.
No smoking on the exhibition floor. Lighting directed, soft and warm — set for the paintings and the whisky's amber both. Service unhurried and quiet enough to be part of the atmosphere rather than an interruption.
Two canapés, each one bite, no cutlery. Muted, natural colours to suit gallery lighting. Nothing heavy, nothing sharp.
Twilight / Threshold — drawn from the flagship painting. Light, mineral, gently umami: a sense of land meeting sea, in stone and blush and dusk tones taken from the canvas itself. White fish and shellfish with a saline edge, a soft herbal note, a gentle sweetness held in check.
Memory & Comfort — drawn from the artist rather than the work. Quỳnh Anh's own references were cookies, the smell of the air after rain, summer, pagodas. Warmer and quietly playful, but still restrained: toasted grains, a little nutted sweetness, textures that felt calming rather than crisp.
A memory of a cookie, not a dessert.
Two cocktails, built to be layered rather than loud, and served clear or lightly hazed.
Dusk Balance — sherry-forward and delicately structured, with a subtle berry note and a herbal lift on the finish. Meant to feel like watching light fade, not like the first sip of the night.
After the Rain — petrichor. Earth, leaves, the air just after a downpour. Fresh without sharpness, herbal and cooling, quietly expressive.
Like standing under a pagoda just after rain, listening rather than speaking.
Both were made in the Source & Origin Lab.
At the threshold where day meets night, light and shadow dissolve into each other. It evokes a state of balance — neither bright nor dark, neither still nor in motion. All colours blend, as human beings merge with the universe, releasing the boundary between self and all things. In the city of Kobe, where the sea meets the mountains and the man-made meets the natural, I wanted this work to be a metaphor for harmony and a return to origin.
The flagship painting is the artist's own account of the exhibition, and it is better in her words than in ours:
Everything else in the room followed from that. The lighting, the pace of the service, the flavours — all of it built to be light, refined and contemplative. Elegant rather than bold. Present without dominating.
Restraint over abundance. Sensitivity over spectacle.