The Oracle of Small Things — Six Cards, Six Questions

There’s one final part of The Great Nurdle Project that I’ve been waiting to share.

Throughout this series, you’ve seen The Oracle of Small Things taking shape — from the first drawings and watercolours to the finished artwork hanging in the exhibition. But I haven’t yet properly shown you the oracle cards themselves.

So, to round up this little journey, I took all six back to where much of their story belongs: the shoreline.

Six cards. Six questions. One tiny particle with vast consequences.

Each card follows another stage in the journey of a nurdle: from something created for our convenience, through escape and pollution, into the natural world, the food chain and ultimately back to us.

But I never wanted the cards simply to tell people what to think.

Instead, each one asks a question.

What do I create for convenience, without considering where it ends?

What have I allowed to escape because it seemed too small to matter?

What invisible things am I absorbing from the world around me?

And eventually:

What future am I creating, one choice at a time?

Together, the six cards form The Oracle of Small Things, accompanied in the exhibition by The Apothecary of Consequences — six imagined potions containing nurdles collected here on the Isle of Wight.

I think there’s something particularly fitting about finally photographing the cards amongst pebbles, seaweed, sand and water. Away from the studio and the gallery, they return to the landscape that inspired them.

And that feels like the right place to end this series.

Not really with an answer, but with a question.

What future are we creating, one small choice at a time?

The Oracle of Small Things & The Apothecary of Consequences were created for The Great Nurdle Project exhibition at Quay Arts, Isle of Wight, 2026.