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In 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate major projects. Famed for introducing art that erases itself, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting human struggles from nuclear disarmament to vegetarianism. In a brief video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative 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 declared, inviting artists and creatives to stand against the continuing disappearance of flora and fauna. “The mission is to help the public recall of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

In this way the environmental art day was established, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain developed works to the escalating planetary emergency. One of the curators, who cared for Metzger in his final years, remembers his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “My advice was – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for financial support or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

Ten years later, the initiative did not sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but organizers feel its legacy can still be felt in initiatives like Culture Declares and environmental protests, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their work. That’s why she is restaging it to commemorate its ten-year mark. Part of the featured creators involved this time are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. They have all designed posters, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be revealed on November 4, 2025.

Planting Hope

Interviewing the artist, she is out in a field in a rural area, cultivating apple trees that will create a circular grove. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and somewhat instructive. As she explains, the design and cultivation sessions have already included learning about measurements (measuring out the planting intervals), genetics (studying the genetic makeup), and origins (researching the journeys of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

Several the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Each has stories behind them. The historical cultivar was brought over by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that descended from a tree and hit the scientist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more thoughtfully connected of nature and the control we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to check the packaging and see their names and their origin. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Nationwide

At the capital, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will involve participants looking through an art institution on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in modern times. Every ice sheet will be depicted on the exhibition spaces using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a recitation will be held to honor that particular glacier.

Meanwhile, up in another location, an artist will be presenting a public show about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, prepared with regional food. Over in Newcastle, an artist is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers begin a project to perform for vegetation in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Children’s Voices

Like Gallaccio, a featured creator will be working with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is planning to decorate a cultural venue in children’s artwork that express their aspirations and concerns for the years ahead. “Youthful expressions are impactful because they’re not as inhibited as mature perspectives,” she says in her call to action video. “Young people’s input to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can stimulate a feeling of duty from everyone. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about fear – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his avian project involves sketching winged creatures and then dressing up as them – and for Remember Nature day he is planning to address Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also conducting a walking tour of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his Pansy Project over the recent decades. That ongoing series started after he endured three incidents of prejudice on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the location of every incident and document it – the project has since spiralled to incorporate experiences reported by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “It seems birds consume them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

He picked the bloom not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at new locations and also renew the tributes in places he has honored before, all the while talking to those on the itinerant journey about the occurrences and his personal experiences. “We’ve seen quite a few after my previous work,” he says with regret.

Moving Forward with Hope

He desires his work – and