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In 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate major projects. Famed for creating art that erases itself, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting human struggles from peace activism to vegetarianism. Through a short video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this global appeal for a day of action to commemorate our planet on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, inviting artists and creatives to stand against the steady eradication of living beings. “Our responsibility is to make audiences aware of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Environmental Reflection

And so Remember Nature came into being, a day when artists across the country created responses to the unfolding climate catastrophe. One of the curators, who worked closely with Metzger in his later life, notes his drive for action. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “I just said – let’s not mess around. No need to pause for sponsorship or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

After Ten Years

A decade on, the initiative may not have sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its impact can still be observed in initiatives like cultural advocacy groups and climate activism networks, as well as in how makers handle the eco-friendliness of their work. For this purpose she is relaunching it to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Part of the key participants taking part currently are A Man Called Adam and Anya Gallaccio. All participants have designed posters, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be presented on 4 November 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

Interviewing the artist, she is on site in Kent, helping plant apple trees that will develop into a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and somewhat instructive. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already included learning about mathematics (measuring out the distances between trees), genetics (exploring the apple’s DNA), and history (tracing the stories of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid

“Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases crimson liquid. Every one carries histories attached. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that fell from a tree and struck the physicist’s head.”

She hoped 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 buy from a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to check the packaging and see what they’re called and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Across the Country

In London, a participant’s Book of Loss will involve participants searching a major gallery on a journey to find the ice masses that have been vanished in modern times. Each glacier will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using special pens. Each discovery, a bell will ring and a performance will be performed to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Meanwhile, up in Barrow-in-Furness, a creative will be presenting a free exhibition about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a shared meal, cooked from regional food. Further north, an artist is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers begin a project to sing plants back to health in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, a featured creator will be working with schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is aiming to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in kids’ letters and drawings that express their dreams and worries for the tomorrow. “Youthful expressions are impactful because they’re not as restricted as grown-ups’,” she says in her public appeal. “What children have to offer to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can provoke a feeling of duty from us all. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But this shouldn’t be about worry – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they have a tomorrow.”

Remembrance and Reflection

A participant’s work also resonates for children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then embodying them – and for the event he is planning to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also organizing a itinerant journey of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his ongoing series over the past twenty years. This endeavor began when he endured multiple occurrences 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 expanded to cover events reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Apparently birds consume them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

He picked the flower not just for the direct association – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The plan on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at additional sites and also replant flowers in places he has marked earlier, all the while talking to those on the guided walk about the events and his personal experiences. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Moving Forward with Hope

The artist wishes his work – and