Without Fear Or Failure

It’s about misogyny, obvs. And the Epstein Files.

Going from left to right, following the line of ‘touch’...

1. Torso of Richard Nixon with the face of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Image of President Nixon (1913 - 1994) leaving the White House after resigning, and the former Prince Andrew (1960 - ) brother of the king, in the back of a cop car, having been arrested on his 66th birthday (19th February, 2026) and held on suspicion of misconduct in public office. 

On June 17, 1972, campaign workers associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election were caught planting listening devices in the opposition Democratic party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate building.

Eventually, President Nixon ‘was obliged to confess publicly that he had lied to his lawyers, the Congress and the public about his role in the plot to hush up the involvement of key members of his staff’. He resigned (August 9, 1974) to avoid probable conviction, and was later pardoned by President Ford, who followed him into office.

‘Watergate - Nixon Resigns’ by Stephen Barber in Washington. Daily Telegraph, 9th August 1974. Photographer uncredited. 125 Years In Words And Pictures: The Daily Telegraph 1955 - 1980. Edited by Andrew Hutchinson. Printed in England by H.E. Warne Ltd., London & St. Austell, 1980. Bought from Oxfam in Bromley for £1.99.

 The ‘letters page’ of the Metro, 23rd February 2026. Photo by Phil Noble/ Reuters.

2. Action Painting by Allen Jones

I’ve never liked the work of Allen Jones (1937 - ), but then I wouldn’t. Believe it or not, this piece was made in 2015 (not 1985) and exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition in 2016, where the artist is a Senior Royal Academician.

Action Painting, 2015, by Allen Jones. 205 x 51 x 61cm. Painted fibreglass figure on stainless steel base. Photo by Leon Chew. Exhibited at the RA Summer Show in 2016. Cut from Summer Exhibition Illustrated 2016, a selection from the 248th Summer Exhibition, edited by Richard Wilson RA. Royal Academy of Arts Publications, 2016. Book design by Adam Brown. Printed in Wales by Gomer Press. ISBN: 978-1-910350-52-2. Front Cover: Pierre et Gilles. Hand painted photograph on canvas.

3. Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966) with ‘women’s libber’s’ feet

Raquel Welch (1940 - 2023) ‘studied drama at San Diego State and played bit parts until ex-child actor and press agent Patrick Curtis took her career in hand, launching her as a sex symbol of the 1960s. The constant barrage of sexy publicity photos tended to obscure the fact she could act. She has never been able to overcome the early image of a busty pin-up. A world tour in the 1980s was a disaster because the press was determined to punish her for trying to be good’.

In 1971 ‘her feet’ were outside of the Miss World Contest at the Albert Hall in London, ‘women’s libbers protest at what they regard as the voyeuristic exploitation of the meat market taking place within. One of them has donned the uniform of a ‘sex object’, though it’s too cold to dispense with her sheepskin Afghan coat, a garment redolent of the era’.

‘One Million Years B.C.’ (1966) was directed by Don Chaffey. Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper (for many years he resided in a seafront flat overlooking the sea in Ferring, West Sussex). Screenplay/ production by Michael Carreras. Edited by Tom Simpson. Music by Mario Nascimbene. Produced by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts. Warner Brothers/ Pathé  Based on the 1940 film by Mickell Novack, George Baker and Joseph Frickert. Image and quote from ‘Great Movies' by Nick Roddick, John Douglas Eames, Vernon Harbin, Clive Hirschhorn and Richard B. Jewell. Foreword by James Mason. Published for Marks and Spencer (Baker St, London) by Octopus Books (59 Grosvenor St, London) 1985. Copyright, Hennerwood Publications Ltd. Produced by Mandarin, 22a Westlands Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Printed in Hong Kong. Front jacket photograph: Kobal Collection. ISBN: 0-86273-2379. Inscribed with (what-looks-like) ‘B.V. Wells TOTAL £10.05’. Bought from a charity shop.

‘Feet’ photo by Chris Djukanovic. Image and quote from ‘An Independent Eye: A Century of Photographs’ by Roger Hudson. Hulton Getty Picture Collection & The Independent. Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1998. ISBN: 0-7509-2107-2. Project manager: Richard Collins. Designer: Paul Welti. Picture researcher: Alex Linghorn. Scanner: Antonia Hille. Typesetter: Peter Howard. Typeset in Frutiger. Originated by Jade Reprographics Ltd. Printed in Great Britain by Butler and Tanner, Frome, Somerset. A birthday gift to Simon from Lucia. Bought from a charity shop.

4. New Orleans ‘Sex Worker’, c1912

The photographer, Bellocq, has erased the woman’s face. Although, there is a slim chance it was his Jesuit priest brother, nobody knows for sure. She was photographed against a blank wall on which she drew a butterfly. There appears to be a heart on her arse. We’ll never know the full story, but I’m choosing to think he erased her face to protect her identity.

Ernest James Bellocq (1873 - 1949) was born into a wealthy New Orleans family. He took photographs of ‘prostitutes’ in the Storyville district of the city, which was one of the country's few legalised red-light districts. This is one of them. I went down a rabbit hole looking at the rest (or at least the ones which have survived) not wanting to like them, but they are beautiful.

Little was known of Bellocq’s work during his lifetime, but seventeen years after his death, Lee Friedlander purchased some glass plates from an antique-book dealer. He made prints, which were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, to great acclaim.

Storyville Portrait, c1912 by E.J. Bellocq. Gold-toned print. 10 x 8 inches. Image cut from ‘The Photo Book’. Phaidon, 1997. Printed in China. ISBN: 978-0-7148-4488-6. Bought from a charity shop.

5. Torso Baby Prince Andrew with the legs of a Kent hopfield worker

‘The baby Prince Andrew, born on 19th February 1960, proudly grasps the hands of his father Prince Philip and his sister Princess Anne at Balmoral in the summer of that year’.

The legs belong to an unnamed worker in a Kent hopfield, 1927. ‘Workers on stilts with bundles of twine which they will tie to the wires stretched horizontally between the poles. The hop bines or stalks will then grow up the twine. Whole families came from the East End of London to strip the catkin-like fruits from the bines, sleeping in barns and sheds, and regarding the time away from their slums and tenements as a holiday outing, with pay.’

Baby Prince Andrew image and quote from ‘The Country Life Book of the Royal Silver Jubilee’ by Patrick Montague-Smith, Hamlyn 1976. Printed in Great Britain by Alabaster Passmore and Sons Ltd., Maidstone, Kent. Page 154. Photo: Camera Press*. Bought from a charity shop.

Legs image and quote from ‘An Independent Eye: A Century of Photographs’, by Roger Hudson. Hulton Getty Picture Collection & The Independent. Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1998. ISBN: 0-7509-2107-2. Project manager: Richard Collins. Designer: Paul Welti. Picture researcher: Alex Linghorn. Scanner: Antonia Hille. Typesetter: Peter Howard. Typeset in Frutiger. Originated by Jade Reprographics Ltd. Printed in Great Britain by Butler and Tanner, Frome, Somerset. A birthday gift to Simon from Lucia. Bought from a charity shop.

6. Policeman

An illustration for Punch Magazine (22nd September, 1888) by John Tenniel (1820 - 1914) mocking police attempts to catch the Ripper. Engraving by Joseph Swain (1820 - 1909) or one of his assistants.

Cut from ‘London… The Sinister Side’ by Steve Jones. Tragical History Tours/ Wicked Publications (222 Highbury Road, Nottingham NG6 9FE) 1986. Typeset and printed in Great Britain by J.W. Brown Ltd., Darwin Press (77a Blackheath Road, London SE10 8PD). ISBN: 1-870000-04-8. Mary Evans Picture Library.

7. Peggy Satterlee ‘teenage floozie’, 1926 - 2005

In 1942, two underage girls, Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, accused Errol Flynn of statutory rape. The trial took place in 1943, and Flynn was acquitted after the defense lawyer, Jerry Giesler, attacked the girls' morals and characters. Giesler had ‘a reputation for getting the big fish of the movie industry off the hook of scandal and disgrace’.

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole with Peggy. She was an actor and made 2 films (uncredited roles) in 1942 when she was 16 years old. She never made another film, so we can read between the lines there. Mary Blair (also, uncredited) did the credits sequence for one of the films, Arabian Nights, and Milton Krasner was the cinematographer.

Image cut from ‘Infamous Crimes That Shook The World’ Poebus/BPC Publishing, 1973 and Macdonald/ Black Cat Publishing (1 New Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1AR) 1989. Printed and bound in Hungary by Novotrade/ Egyetemi Press. ISBN: 0-7481-0260-4. Photo: UPI. Bought for £1.50 from Barnardos on Penge High Street on 9th November, 2024.

8. Nadia Comăneci 

At the age of 14, Nadia Comăneci (1961 - ) ‘scored seven 10s in Montreal (1976). Before her, no olympic gymnast had received one’.

‘Afterwards they asked her why she didn’t smile more’.

It was a demanding schedule for 12 and 13 year olds. “The authorities made us lie about the amount of training we did”.

‘Little Miss Perfect’ by David Walsh, July 1976. Cut from ‘The Sporting Century’, edited by Alan English. The Times Newspapers Ltd. Published by HarperCollins/ Willow (77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6) 1999. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bath Press Ltd. Designed by Paul Calver and Roger Hammond. ISBN: 0-7230-1044-7. Further acknowledgements to Jeremy Bayston, Lawrence Smith, John Smith, Julian Osbaldstone, Clare Harrison and Thomas Cussans.

9. Evelyn Del Rio

Evelyn Del Rio (1931 - 1998) was known as ‘the Latin Shirley Temple’, she began her career at age 3 with a radio show called ‘The Baby Evelyn Show’. She was a headline dancer at the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre from age 3 to 13. She acted in 17 movies, including ‘The Bank Dick’ where she is pictured here as Elsie Mae Adele Brunch Sousé. Call me cynical, but I can’t see how she could’ve possibly escaped abuse of some kind or another.

The Bank Dick directed by Eddie Cline. Universal Pictures, 1940. Written by WC Fields. Directed by Edward F Cline and Ralph Ceder. Cinematography by Milton R Krasner. Actors pictured: WC Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Jessie Ralph and Evelyn del Rio. Cut from ‘50 Years of the Movies’ by Jeremy Pascall. Published by Hamlyn for WH Smith, 1981. Printed and bound in Spain by Graficromo. ISBN: 0-600-34207-7. Once belonged to Sarah.

*The photo credits are as they appear in the books/articles from which the images were cut. For the record, I don’t accept the name of a company as a photography credit. There was an actual person behind the camera. If you are that person, or know them, please give me a shout.

Copyright: Alison Aye, 2026

Shifting To The Moon

68. Shifting To The Moon, 2022

Hand-stitched paper to tea towel

60 x 44cm unframed, 62 x 47cm framed (by The Framing Room, with maple and UV glass)

‘Shifting’ is a Durham colloquialism, meaning ‘to move house’. I grew up in a car-free environment, and people often carried furniture by hand, from one house to another. Everybody helped. I have a picture, somewhere, of my dad transporting Uncle David’s couch by wheelbarrow, or ‘barra’ as he calls it.

Moon: From the film La Voyage Dans La Lune, 1902, by George Méliès. The first ever science fiction film. From the book by Jules Verne. Michaut/ Lucien Tainguy. Cut from 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Steven Jay Schneider, Cassell 2003.

Monkey: Sam, Dec 1959. Nasa Little Joe Test Programme. Hulton Getty Picture Collection. Nick Yapp.

Robot: Alpha, July 1932. Invented by Harry May for the Mullard Valve Company. Hulton Getty Picture Collection. Nick Yapp. Legend has it, that the robot shot the inventor.

Basket: From the film, Around The World In Eighty Days, United Artists, 1956. David Niven and Cantinflas were in the basket. Michael Anderson/Kevin McClory/Mike Todd. Cinematography by Lionel Lindon. George Rinhart/Getty. Cut from 50 Years Of The Movies by Jeremy Pascall, WH Smith 1981.

Andrew and Charles Windsor, now King: ‘Gaining their parachutist’s wings during the Easter holiday from Gordonstoun’ c1978. Coloursport. Cut from Britain In The Seventies by Ronald Allison. Book Club Associates, 1980.

Jarrow Crusade: In October 1936, 200 men marched 300 miles from Jarrow to Westminster to protest against unemployment and poverty. They brought with them a petition requesting the re-establishment of industry. It was received by the House of Commons, but not debated.

Achtung! Sie Verlassen Jetzt West-Berlin: The image, from which this sign is taken, is the copyright of the family of Richard Bissell, who was a CIA officer. He was an administrator of the European Recovery Plan in Germany, after the Second World War. Cut from The American Century by Harold Evans, Jonathan Cape, 1998.

Four More Years: From an image (Charles Nye, 1972) of Richard Nixon electioneering in Ohio, just before the full scope of his Watergate involvement was revealed.

Wet Paint: David McEnery, 1975. Mirror Group.

Maggitun Devastation For Kent: Maggitun didn’t really catch on as an alias for the Channel Tunnel. From an image of anti-tunnel protesters in Folkstone. QA Photographs, the Channel Tunnel Group Ltd. Cut from Breakthrough by Derek Wilson, Century, 1991.

Tow Away Zone: From the film, Manhattan by Woody Allen. United Artists, 1979. 50 Years of the Movies by Jeremy Pascall, WH Smith 1981.

Britain Awake: Fascist banner.

Caution No Swimming: Banksy, 2005. Bathing Lake, Hyde Park, London. Lasted three and a half weeks. Cut from Banksy Wall and Peace, Century 2006.

The Batchelors: 1922, Getty.

Face of the Enemy in Kabul: State Britain by Mark Wallinger, 2007. Brian Haw’s banners recreated.

Reserved For Pastor: William Lovelace, 1961. From a photograph of two men sleeping in the pastor’s car park during a siege of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama, by a white mob of three thousand during the night of 20th/21st May, 1961.

The End of the World is Near: David McEnery, 1975. Mirror Group.

Peace: From a photo taken en route to a Women’s Peace Congress in the Hague, April 13th 1915. Jane Addams, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Annie E Malloy. Possibly Mary Heaton Vorse and Lillian Kohlhamer. Bain News Service. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress. The American Century by Harold Evans, Jonathan Cape 1998.

Gone to Morroco with Hilton: From a picture of Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin by Carl Freedman, 1993. It’s the one where they are standing in the doorway of ‘The Shop’ on Bethnal Green Road, London. The sign is painted above the door. Don’t know who Hilton is, and neither does Google. If I ever meet Tracey or Sarah, it’s the first thing I’ll ask them. Cut from Artrage by Elizabeth Fullerton, Thames and Hudson 2016.

Bands Won’t Play No More: Quote from Ghost Town by The Specials/ Jerry Dammers. 2 Tone Records. BBC 1981. Stitched in honour of Terry Hall (1959 - 1922) who died during the making of this piece. Also, I now recognise areas of London in the video, which I didn’t know in 1981. Why must the youth fight against themselves? Particularly poignant at the moment.

Smash Thatcher: Cartoon drawn by Christopher Madden, who read my Observer piece, then saw his work stitched to my work at the RA. He said, 'Well, this is an interesting way to get one's work into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Draw a cartoon of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 in her Iron Lady/ Mad Axewoman persona. Have the cartoon picked up by the Socialist Workers Party for placards and posters. Have the placard redrawn by other people for their own personal placards. Have one of those copied placards printed in a newspaper somewhere. Have that print used in a montage in an artwork in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition forty-five years later. Thanks to Alison Aye for her excellent choice of montage material. My own attempts to get into the Summer Exhibition have always been a failure. Shortlisted a couple of times but always fallen at the final hurdle'.

Consett Steel Workers’ banner. I grew up in Spennymoor which is 14 miles from Consett, and very similar. Nobody in my hometown liked Thatcher. I’d never knowingly met a tory until I moved South. Northern Echo. Cut from Memories of County Durham in the 1980s, in association with Love Darlo.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All: State Britain by Mark Wallinger, 2007. Brian Haw’s banners recreated.

First National Coal: Betteshanger Colliery, Deal, Kent. NCB, 1st January 1947. 100 Years in Pictures by DC Somervell, Odhams Press.

The Magi of Chaldea (Wise Men): Priest-Astronomers who gave names to the stars. Odhams Wonder-World of Knowledge by JA Lauwerys, RL James and Brian Vasey-Fitzgerald. There’s a long list of possible illustrators: Carlo Alexander, AE Barbosa, Laurence Bradbury, Royman Browne, AH Burvill, Gaynor Chapman, David Cobb, Neville Colvin, H Connolly, Gordon Davies, Rowland Davies, Bruce Drysdale, Barry Evans, EI Ford, Grace Golden, LG Goodwin, Harry Green, LS Haywood, W Hobson, Peter Horne, William Kempster, P Kesteven, R King, Richard Leacroft, Joan Martin May, N Meredith or C Newsome-Taylor.

Please note that I do not reproduce physical images to stitch, but use already printed materials. The paper comes from discarded books, newspapers, magazines, calendars and the like. Most of the books I cut are beyond repair, the rest are beyond my respect.

Copyright: Alison Aye, 2024.