Artists Respond Against the Planetary Crisis: Cultivating the Apple That Dropped on Newton's Head

Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his last significant endeavors. Known for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting human struggles from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. Through a short video message, he issued a call for a international event to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this international summons for a day of action to remember nature on 4 November 2015,” he stated, encouraging cultural workers to stand against the ongoing loss of living beings. “The mission is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are inherently creative.”

The Creation of Environmental Reflection

And so the Nature Remembrance initiative was established, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who cared for Metzger in his later life, notes his drive for action. “There was a great sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “My advice was – don’t delay. No need to pause for sponsorship or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

After ten years, the project hasn’t quite triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be observed in movements like Culture Declares and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how makers handle the environmental impact of their practices. This is the reason she is restaging it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Included in the 18 lead artists participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. Each has designed posters, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be revealed on 4 November 2025.

Sowing Change

Interviewing one participant, she is working outdoors in the countryside, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a circular grove. Working with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and part learning experience. She describes, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (spacing the gaps in the orchard), genetics (studying the apple’s DNA), and origins (mapping the journeys of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

Several the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid

“Several the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases crimson liquid. Each has background narratives. The historical cultivar was imported by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that dropped off a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more consciously engaged of the natural world and the influence we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see what they’re called and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Across the Country

Within the city, a participant’s Book of Loss will involve participants searching a major gallery on a mission to find the frozen formations that have been disappeared in modern times. Every ice sheet will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using special pens. Whenever one is found, a chime will sound and a recitation will be held to honor that individual formation.

Elsewhere, up in Barrow-in-Furness, Maddi Nicholson will be hosting a public show about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a community dinner, made using regional food. Over in Newcastle, an artist is broadcasting her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers undertake a task to perform for vegetation in a green space.

Young Insights

Following this approach, another participant will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to fill an art space in youth creations that document their aspirations and concerns for the tomorrow. “Kids’ art are powerful because they’re not as trammelled as grown-ups’,” she says in her recorded message. “Young people’s input to the world is something truly special and it may provoke a awareness of obligation from everyone. Youth is pure. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about fear – it should be about positivity and making sure that they get a future.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves illustrating avians and then performing as birds – and for the event he is planning to address a local symbol. He is also organizing a guided walk of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his Pansy Project over the last two decades. That ongoing series began when he faced multiple occurrences of discrimination on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the spot where it happened and record it – the project has since spiralled to include incidents experienced by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Apparently wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the flower not just for the clear connection – it has long been a derogatory label – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The plan on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at additional sites and also renew the tributes in places he has honored before, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the events and his personal experiences. “There’s been quite a few after my previous work,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and