I’m Waving: Emma Alonze brings art, chaos + disorder back to the King’s Road
As part of west London’s recent INTransit festival, artist Emma Alonze staged a series of chaotic public interventions in and around Chelsea’s King’s Road under the title I’m Waving.
//Cakewalking: Alonze with Alexander James Turner, Andy Becker, James Batley and Mandi Goodier. This and other cake parade photos: Claire Poulter//
The two-and-a-half mile thoroughfare has all but lost its reputation as the wellspring for creative activity so Alonze’s acts – by turn absurd, impulsive and surprising – were most welcome in the neighbourhood where property values rather than artistic considerations top the agenda.
And I’m Waving was achieved against resistance from the local council, which deemed six of Alonze’s 10 planned acts “not suitable”.
//Boy On A Dolphin escaped transformation//
//St Thomas More and his makeover cape//
Among these was a transformation with glam materials of Sir David Wynne’s Boy On A Dolpin bronze sculpture on the corner of Cheyne Walk opposite Battersea Bridge.
Prohibited from carrying this out, Alonze instead draped the statue to St Thomas More in the grounds of Chelsea Old Church with a bright pink cape.
In another act, Alonze traced the streets of Chelsea with trails of glitter and talcum pink powder. “It was loved and hated all at once – just the reaction I hoped for,” she says.
And she also organised a parade on a Saturday afternoon along the King’s Road from World’s End to Duke of York Square with specially baked cakes into which participants face-planted at regular intervals.
“The people we encountered looked at us like we were diseased, turned their shoulders and backs away from us and screwed up their faces,” says Alonze. “Other’s couldn’t look, it was easier for them to not see it at all.”
Read more about Emma Alonze here.