🔗 Share this article

In 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last important works. Recognized for introducing self-destructive creations, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing human struggles from anti-nuclear advocacy to plant-based living. Via a concise video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to celebrate the natural world.

“I call upon you for your engagement in this international summons for a day of action to commemorate our planet on November 4th, 2015,” he announced, encouraging makers and thinkers to stand against the steady eradication of species. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Inception of Environmental Reflection

In this way the Nature Remembrance initiative came into being, a day when creatives nationwide developed works to the unfolding climate catastrophe. Jo Joelson, who worked closely with Metzger in his later life, remembers his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I urged him – let’s not mess around. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to green light this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, Remember Nature hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but Joelson believes its legacy can still be seen in initiatives like Culture Declares and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how artists approach the environmental impact of their methods. That’s why she is restaging it to commemorate its ten-year mark. Part of the key participants taking part currently are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. All participants have created visual art, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be presented on November 4, 2025.

Planting Hope

When speaking to Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in a rural area, cultivating apple trees that will create a spiral-shaped orchard. Working with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and part learning experience. As she explains, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about maths (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), biology (discussing the apple’s DNA), and geography (researching the stories of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces scarcolored sap

“A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that produces crimson liquid. They all have background narratives. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and hit the scientist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more actively aware of the natural world and the power we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was urging them, when they go shopping, to check the packaging and see the variety and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Cultural Projects Throughout Britain

Within the city, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will include attendees searching an art institution on a mission to find the ice masses that have been vanished in modern times. All formations will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a alert will occur and a reading will be held to honor that specific ice mass.

At the same time, up in Barrow-in-Furness, an artist will be putting on a open display about our separation from nature, as well as organizing a shared meal, prepared with sustainable ingredients. Further north, a participant is broadcasting her musical project, in which regional performers begin a project to sing plants back to health in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Similar to other artists, another participant will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is aiming to fill a cultural venue in children’s artwork that express their aspirations and concerns for the tomorrow. “Kids’ art are compelling because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her recorded message. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and it may provoke a awareness of obligation from us all. Kids are unbiased. They have concerns for tomorrow. But let’s not make it about worry – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they see a better world.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his avian project involves drawing birds and then embodying them – and for Remember Nature day he is intending to tackle an iconic figure. He is also conducting a walking tour of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the last two decades. This endeavor began when he experienced several events of discrimination on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to cover events reported by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently 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. “It was linked to a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The plan on the event day is to sow flowers at additional sites and also replant flowers in places he has marked earlier, all the while discussing with those on the walking tour about the incidents and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

Harfleet hopes his work – and