Alan McFetridge, Under This One Tree
“Which doesn’t, of course, excuse our part in the burning. Because ‘How can we live anywhere else but in this one tree?’” – Robert Adams.
Under This One Tree is the Summer Exhibition in the 2026 Daisy Green Collection Artist Residency, presented at Holland Park Café. The Arts programme is curated by Justin Hibbs and developed over twelve months in and around Holland Park. The exhibition began with McFetridge’s return to observing trees as living presences, ordinary and profound: forms of shelter, exposure, dependence, memory and time.
The title draws on a line from Zbigniew Herbert’s 1957 poem A Small Bird, first published in 1957. McFetridge encountered the line through a handwritten letter from the American photographer Robert Adams, sent after Adams saw McFetridge’s book On The Line. In the letter, Adams quoted Herbert’s question: “How can we live anywhere else but in this one tree?”
Above: Detail, Robert Adams letter to Alan McFetridge, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
“Entering Holland Park through the northern gate, there is an immediate sense of sanctuary in crossing into a hidden garden. The threshold is felt at once. The pace changes as if the body were being submerged in water, but more subtly. The density of trees changes the air and the floor. In that change, I return to the recognition, Ko te whenua, he whenua, the land is land. Ground remains ground for everybody. I began using exposures of up to ten minutes as a way to slow myself down and commune with the trees and the ancestry at a pace, I imagine, that is nearer to theirs. For us, ten minutes can feel like a duration. For a tree, it is closer to the space of one breath. Photography gives me a way to sense that difference.” – Alan McFetridge.
Exhibition details:
Alan McFetridge: Under This One Tree
21 June to 19 September 2026
Opening Reception: Summer Solstice, Sunday 21 June 2026, 4 to 8 pm
Daisy Green Holland Park
Free entry