Mount Etna etching that was used in Frikandel

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I only use fragments of these images when I’m screen printing onto the canvasses. I deploy them like broken shards—similar to how Hannah Höch or Kurt Schwitters used pages torn from textbooks or newspapers. This slows the reading of the painting right down for the viewer, supplying a more lengthy reveal that changes depending on what memories or imaginative reading each individual is bringing to the painting. I’m more interested in how a viewer might decipher the relationship between the volcano and the objects painted in the painting rather than supplying any clear or singular reading of the work.


‘Illustration of the terrifying fire of Mount Etna as it occurred in the year 1669’ -
How did you first come across the Warburg Institute’s Photographic physician database Collection, and what drew you to use it as a source of inspiration in your artwork?
Initially, my brother, Phil Goss, recommended visiting the collection, we were working on a collaborative project with a clothing brand based on Orpheus and Eurydice mythology. A while later my good friend Tom Marks recommended meeting up at the Warburg Institute, he was completing a fellowship there and introduced me to Paul Taylor at the Photographic collection.



I vividly remember looking up imagery connected to a deluge or floods, Paul pulled out a folder from a filing cabinet filled with the most eclectic and strange imagery and from then on I’ve been visiting whenever I can.