Alice Wilson’s SAVOY (2024) is a dense vertical forest of brightly coloured construction timbers with schematic outlines of dwellings and architectural elements at their tips, standing next to the existing Artist’s Hut, which Wilson has entirely wrapped in a monochromatic photograph of a sunlit Scottish forest.

It is a work that dissolves material and architectural hierarchies. Construction timber, telegraph pole and photographic representation all have equal status in the sculpture. Black and white photography engulfs the only architectural structure in the garden, the Artist’s Hut, creating a depiction of a forest space in which the mind is invited to wander. Pieces of home, window and outlines of small houses are powerfully thrust aloft, framing fragments of sky. The cast of a simple and anonymous dwelling sits on top of its telegraph pole, a defiant mediator between hut and hotel.

Wilson is interested in the human convention of naming homes and how it creates and marks human attachment to place. Passing The Savoy hotel on her daily walk along The Strand during her residency at The Artist’s Garden, she reflected on her sculpture and the hotel being at opposite ends of a spectrum materially but aligned in their capacity to mark imaginative space.

For Wilson, the act of making by hand, and leaving plentiful evidence of each process, is fundamental to both her and our understanding of materials and meaning.

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Text by the COLAB art to accompany installation as part of Mary Mary. SAVOY was commissioned by the COLAB art for inclusion in this group exhibition of female sculptors running from 2024 to September 2025.

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All Photography Credit: Nick Turpin @the_nick_turpin