Creatives Fight Back Against the Environmental Crisis: Sowing the Apple That Fell on Isaac Newton's Head

During 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger embarked on one of his last significant endeavors. Known for pioneering art that erases itself, Metzger had spent a lifetime to responding to human struggles from peace activism to vegetarianism. Through a short video message, he issued a call for a international event to honor the environment.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this international summons for a day of action to commemorate our planet on 4 November 2015,” he announced, encouraging makers and thinkers to oppose the continuing disappearance of living beings. “Our task is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are naturally imaginative.”

The Birth of Nature Remembrance

Thus the environmental art day was established, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain produced pieces to the unfolding climate catastrophe. Jo Joelson, who supported Metzger in his later life, recalls his feeling of immediacy. “He had a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I urged him – don’t delay. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

Ten years later, Remember Nature may not have sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but Joelson believes its influence can still be felt in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the eco-friendliness of their methods. For this purpose she is relaunching it to celebrate its ten-year mark. Part of the featured creators taking part currently are Cornelia Parker and other notable figures. All participants have produced imagery, made video appeals, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on November 4, 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

Interviewing one participant, she is on site in a rural area, cultivating apple trees that will grow to form a spiral-shaped orchard. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. As she explains, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (measuring out the distances between trees), genetics (exploring the genetic makeup), and history (mapping the backgrounds of how different apples were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that releases red juice

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ scarlet-colored sap. Every one carries stories behind them. The ancient variety was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and struck Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more actively aware of the natural world and the control we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to look on the bag and see their names and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Cultural Projects Nationwide

At the capital, one artist’s Book of Loss will engage visitors looking through an art institution on a mission to find the ice masses that have been disappeared in recent years. Each glacier will be illustrated on the gallery’s windows and walls using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a chime will sound and a recitation will be performed to remember that individual formation.

Meanwhile, up in Barrow-in-Furness, a creative will be presenting a public show about our disconnection from the land, as well as hosting a communal feast, cooked from organic, local produce. Further north, a participant is broadcasting her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers begin a project to perform for vegetation in a green space.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, Cornelia Parker will be working with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is aiming to fill Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in youth creations that express their hopes and fears for the future. “Kids’ art are compelling because they’re not as trammelled as grown-ups’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and hopefully it will inspire a awareness of obligation from each person. Kids are unbiased. They have anxieties about what’s next. But it isn’t meant to be about fear – it should be about optimism and us ensuring that they have a tomorrow.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also appeals to children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves illustrating avians and then embodying them – and for the initiative 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 ongoing series over the past twenty years. That ongoing series started after he endured multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to incorporate experiences experienced by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

The artist selected the flower not just for the clear connection – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The project on the event day is to place blooms at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while conversing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Moving Forward with Hope

He desires his work – and