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Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last significant endeavors. Famed for pioneering self-destructive creations, Metzger had devoted his career to addressing global challenges from peace activism to plant-based living. Via a concise video message, he requested support for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“I call upon you for your involvement in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on 4 November 2015,” he announced, inviting makers and thinkers to stand against the ongoing loss of flora and fauna. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore realms that are inherently creative.”

The Inception of Nature Remembrance

In this way the environmental art day came into being, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain produced pieces to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, remembers his sense of urgency. “I sensed a strong sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “I just said – don’t delay. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to green light this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

After ten years, Remember Nature may not have triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but organizers feel its impact can still be felt in movements like Culture Declares and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the environmental impact of their methods. For this purpose she is restaging it to mark its decade milestone. Among the key participants participating now are Cornelia Parker and other notable figures. They have all created visual art, recorded calls to action, and created artworks set to be presented on 4 November 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will grow to form a spiral-shaped orchard. Working with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. She describes, the design and cultivation sessions have already involved learning about mathematics (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), science (exploring the hereditary traits), and geography (mapping the backgrounds of how different apples were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that produces red juice

“A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Every one carries stories behind them. The decio apple was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected 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 encouraging them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see what they’re called and the source. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Cultural Projects Across the Country

In London, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will engage visitors looking through Tate Modern on a mission to find the ice masses that have been vanished in modern times. Every ice sheet will be drawn on the gallery’s windows and walls using invisible ink. Each discovery, a chime will sound and a recitation will be performed to commemorate that particular glacier.

At the same time, up in Barrow-in-Furness, Maddi Nicholson will be hosting a public show about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, cooked from sustainable ingredients. In another city, an artist is streaming her musical project, in which local singers embark on a mission to perform for vegetation in a local park.

Children’s Voices

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be working with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is hoping to fill a cultural venue in kids’ letters and drawings that document their dreams and worries for the years ahead. “Children’s words and images are powerful because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “Young people’s input to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can provoke a sense of responsibility from us all. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But it isn’t meant to be about worry – it should be about optimism and us ensuring that they get a future.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also appeals to children. Drawing on past experience, his avian project involves illustrating avians and then embodying them – and for the initiative he is aiming to address an iconic figure. He is also conducting a guided walk of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his ongoing series over the recent decades. That ongoing series began when he experienced multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a particular day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the site of each occurrence and document it – the project has since spiralled to include incidents reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is thoughtful, 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 marked earlier, all the while discussing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his personal experiences. “There’s been quite a few following earlier installations,” he says with regret.

Moving Forward with Hope

He desires his work – and