The formation of archives can been seen as a process of sedimentation in which the papers circulating in an office are deposited in the archive and stored for potential future reference.

In Arkheion the random grid references the often chaotic way in which artefacts and information are donated to museum archives by well intentioned benefactors. The paper fibres that are collected on the grid stand in for the papers in an office setting giving substance to the information contained within the archival holdings.

In any archival process not all of the available material is retained in the archive but in Arkheion it is entirely a matter of contingency as to what escapes through the voids in the grid and what is captured for future interpretation.

The title Arkheion comes from the Greek 'house of the archon' or residence of those who command, it is the concept of the archive being the residence of the the Archon, or law giver, that invests the archive with its authority - it is the place that gives the law - when we require the 'facts' we turn to the archive. However research shows that through its gaps and absences the archive can, intentionally or otherwise, give a biased view of the past.

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