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Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger embarked on one of his final significant endeavors. Known for pioneering art that erases itself, Metzger had devoted his career to addressing global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to ethical eating. Via a concise video message, he requested support for a international event to remember nature.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this international summons for a day of action to reflect on the environment on 4 November 2015,” he stated, encouraging cultural workers to resist the ongoing loss of species. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Creation of Environmental Reflection

In this way Remember Nature was established, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who cared for Metzger in his last days, remembers his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – let’s not mess around. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to green light this. Let’s just do it.”

A Decade Later

A decade on, the initiative hasn’t quite triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but organizers feel its impact can still be seen in movements like artist-led declarations and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the environmental impact of their practices. That’s why she is reviving it to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Part of the key participants involved this time are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. Each has produced imagery, shared messages, and developed pieces set to be presented on the fourth of November next year.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is on site in the countryside, assisting with planting apple trees that will grow to form a coiled garden. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and somewhat instructive. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (spacing the distances between trees), genetics (studying the apple’s DNA), and history (tracing the journeys of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that produces crimson liquid

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Every one carries histories attached. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on the scientist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more actively aware of the environment and the power we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, next time they were out, to look on the bag and see their names and their origin. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Nationwide

Within the city, one artist’s Book of Loss will include attendees looking through an art institution on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been vanished in recent years. Every ice sheet will be drawn on the museum surfaces using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a recitation will be conducted to remember that specific ice mass.

Elsewhere, up in Barrow-in-Furness, Maddi Nicholson will be putting on a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a community dinner, prepared with regional food. Over in Newcastle, an artist is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which regional performers embark on a mission to sing plants back to health in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Like Gallaccio, another participant will be working with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is planning to fill an art space in children’s artwork that capture their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Children’s words and images are powerful because they’re not as restricted as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and perhaps it can inspire a sense of responsibility from each person. Youth is pure. They have concerns for tomorrow. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they get a future.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Another artist’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then dressing up as them – and for the initiative he is intending to represent an iconic figure. He is also organizing a guided walk of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his Pansy Project over the recent decades. The project commenced following he endured several events of prejudice on a particular day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since grown to cover events shared by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

The artist selected the bloom not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a slur – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The intention on Remember Nature day is to plant pansies at additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has honored before, all the while talking to those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his recollections. “We’ve seen quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and