‘We planted the apple that fell on Newton’s head’: artists respond to the climate emergency | Art and design

forIn 2015, towards the end of his life, artist and activist Gustav Metzger decided to embark on one last major project. Best known as the inventor of the art of self-destruction – a response to the devastating horrors of the Holocaust – Metzger was also, over the course of his long career, an inspirational teacher to the WHO’s Pete Townshend, and campaigned for numerous causes including nuclear disarmament and vegetarianism. Now, in a video message less than three minutes long, he was making a final plea.

“I, Gustav Metzger, ask for your participation in this global call for a Day of Action to Remember Nature on November 4, 2015,” he began, calling on creators to take a stand against the ongoing erasure of species. “Our mission is to remind people of the richness and complexity of nature…and by doing so, art will enter into inherently creative territories.”

And so Remember Nature was born, a day on which artists across the country created responses to the unfolding climate catastrophe (89-year-old Metzger spent the day with students at Central Saint Martins in London who were deleting climate crisis stories from old issues of The Guardian).

“There was a great sense of urgency for Metzger at the end of his life,” says Joe Joelson, one of the original curators of Remember Nature, as well as a neighbor and caregiver to Metzger in his final years. “I just told him – let’s not mess around. Let’s not wait for funding or for anyone to greenlight this. Let’s just do it.”

A decade later, Remember Nature may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its ripples can still be felt in movements like Declaration of Culture and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in the way artists approach the sustainability of their practices. That’s why she reproduced it to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The eighteen main artists participating this time include Cornelia Parker, Yu Zhen Wang, A Man Called Adam, and Anya Gallaccio. They have all designed posters, recorded their own calls to remember nature and created artworks set to be unveiled on November 4, 2025.

When I spoke to Gallaccio she was in a field in Kent, helping to plant apple trees that will grow into a spiral orchard. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half an artwork (the espalier trees will, in the future, look as if they are holding hands) and half an educational workshop. As she told me, the planning and planting sessions actually involved learning mathematics (measuring distances between trees), science (discussing the DNA of an apple) and geography (tracing the stories of how different types of apples arrived in Britain).

“A lot of apples were chosen because they have funny names like bloody butcher or duckbill,” Gallaccio says. “We have one apple that bleeds red juice. They all have stories behind them. The Desio apple was introduced by the Romans. The Kent Rose is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted children to be more aware of nature and our control over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you found in the supermarket, so I would encourage them, next time they were out shopping, to look in the bag and find out what it is called and where it was grown. Hopefully it says Kent on it!”

Next year, Gallaccio plans to have the kids return to the orchard to harvest and taste different apples — and they hope to form a connection with the trees that will last over the 20 years the field has been reserved. She also sees the grove as a “very good visual marker of climate change and global warming” as there is already evidence that our warmer seasons leave trees confused about the actual time of year. “It will be interesting to see what that means in terms of how trees adapt and when they do or don’t fruit.”

The transplant was filmed and the broadcast will be available to watch on November 4, but of course Gallaccio’s project is just one of many. In London, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will feature participants searching the Tate Modern in an attempt to find the seven major glaciers that have been lost in recent years. Each glacier will be painted on the windows and walls of the gallery using UV markers. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a reading will be performed to commemorate that particular glacier.

Meanwhile, in Barrow-in-Furness, Maddy Nicholson will be holding a free exhibition about our disconnection from the land, as well as hosting a communal feast, made from local organic produce. In Newcastle, Uta Kögelsberger inducts the Some Kind of Love/Forest Choir, where local singers embark on a mission to sing plants back to health at Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be working with schoolchildren – and on the same day aims to cover Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge with children’s letters and drawings documenting their hopes and fears about the future. “Children’s words and images are powerful because they are not as restricted as adults,” she says in the call-to-action video. “What children have to offer the world is something unique and hopefully will spark a sense of responsibility in all of us. Children are innocent. They have fears about the future. But this should not be about fear – it should be about hope and ensuring they have a future.”

Paul Harfleet’s work also appeals to children. As a former drag queen, his Birds Can Fly project involves drawing birds and then dressing them up – and on Nature Remember Day, he plans to tackle Liverpool’s famous liverwort. He also takes a walking tour of the city, visiting many of the sites that have been part of his Pansy project over the past two decades. This ongoing series began when he was living in Manchester and experienced three incidents of gay abuse in one day. In response, Harfleet decided to plant a rose at the site of each incident and photograph it – and the project has since evolved to include incidents witnessed by other people around the world. “I leave pansies there, but they often don’t last long,” Harfleet says. “The pigeons obviously like to eat it, so it’s a very temporary souvenir.”

Harfleet chose the rose plant not only for the obvious reason – it has long been a term for homophobic abuse – but also because its name is derived from the French verb, penserTo think. “It has become associated with a thinking man, which of course is a terrible thing,” he says.

The plan on November 4 is to plant pansies in new locations as well as replant flowers in places he has previously lived, all the while talking to those who took the walking tour about the events and his memories of them. “There have been quite a few plants since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Harfleet hopes his work — and that of the other participating artists — will create conversations and spark controversy, just like Metzger’s work. “I found it really touching the way he remained optimistic, even in his old age,” he says.

Joelson also cherishes Metzger’s positive nature, and says that’s what led her to redo Remember Nature in the first place. “We wanted to offer something compelling and empowering rather than something depressing and depressing, which is what we get exposed to all the time,” she says. “We can’t live our lives in darkness, so let’s use his motto instead: Move forward, with hope!”