I spent last summer as artist-in-residence at Sir John Soane’s Museum, working from his original Drawing Office with full access to the extraordinary collections and library of the museum – an exceptional chance to expand my practice and explore the hidden connections between various disciplines. The museum is a space that is filled with ghosts: rooms for the dead and the living alike, elaborately descending stairs, sudden recesses, canopies, light falling from unexpected sources, and  numerous dramatic juxtapositions reminiscent of Piranesi’s etchings, which Soane also collected. The story begins not in the early 1800s when Soane built his house, but in the ruins of the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. My talk will trace Soane back to the origin of the ruins that fascinated and haunted him, from his Grand Tour to Italy in the 1780s, where he is said to have encountered Sir William Hamilton, an avid collector, archaeologist, volcanologist, and antiquarian. Hamilton’s work on the volcanoes was published as Campi Phlegraei, a book that Soane owned, now in the Museum’s library. The talk will also explore Soane’s architecture, focusing on his use of reflective surfaces in the 1800s, drawing parallels between the museum’s collections and Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, as well as Eisenstein’s theory of montage.