🔗 Share this article

In 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate major projects. Known for introducing art that erases itself, Metzger had devoted his career to responding to societal issues from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. In a brief video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on November 4th, 2015,” he stated, encouraging artists and creatives to oppose the ongoing loss of species. “The mission is to make audiences aware of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are inherently creative.”

The Creation of Nature Remembrance

In this way Remember Nature was established, a day when creatives nationwide created responses to the unfolding climate catastrophe. One of the curators, who supported Metzger in his last days, remembers his drive for action. “He had a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I urged him – let’s not mess around. Let’s not wait for sponsorship or for anyone to green light this. Take action immediately.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the project hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but Joelson believes its impact can still be seen in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the sustainability of their work. For this purpose she is restaging it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Among the 18 lead artists involved this time are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. All participants have produced imagery, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be revealed on November 4, 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with one participant, she is out in a field in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will create a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and half educational workshop. As she explains, the planning and planting sessions have already involved learning about measurements (calculating the distances between trees), genetics (exploring the apple’s DNA), and origins (tracing the journeys of how various cultivars came to the UK).

Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice

“Several the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases red juice. Every one carries background narratives. The decio apple was brought over by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that dropped off a tree and hit the physicist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more consciously engaged of nature and the control we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see what they’re called and where they were grown. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Throughout Britain

Within the city, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will involve participants searching Tate Modern on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been disappeared in recent years. Every ice sheet will be drawn on the gallery’s windows and walls using ultraviolet markers. When located, a bell will ring and a recitation will be conducted to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, an artist will be putting on a public show about our disconnection from the land, as well as holding a communal feast, prepared with organic, local produce. Further north, Uta Kögelsberger is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which local singers begin a project to perform for vegetation in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Youth Perspectives

Similar to other artists, Cornelia Parker will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is aiming to cover Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in youth creations that capture their aspirations and concerns for the years ahead. “Children’s words and images are impactful because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and hopefully it will stimulate a feeling of duty from us all. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about hope and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also resonates for children. Drawing on past experience, his avian project involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for the event he is intending to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also conducting a itinerant journey 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 three incidents of homophobic abuse on a one occasion. In response, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the spot where it happened and document it – the project has since grown to cover events reported by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

Harfleet chose the pansy not just for the clear connection – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The project on 4 November is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also renew the tributes in places he has marked earlier, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the incidents and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few since I last planted,” he says mournfully.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and