Three in a million - an epistemological study of a Portsmouth art project

Pete Codling's One Million Pebbles project engaged the public in Portsmouth in making pebbles to be fired and deposited in the sea, aiming to create a genuinely public artwork in which the number of participants mattered as much as the number of individual pieces made. This article explores the making of the work and the subsequent history of some of the pebbles made, drawing upon artistic, anthropological and archaeological parallels to suggest ways in which the pebbles came to have value to both their makers and those who found them washed up on the beach. The urge to collect the pebbles - an unintended consequence of the project which the artist has now embraced on a Facebook page, is also explored