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Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last important works. Known for pioneering art that erases itself, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. Through a short video message, he requested support for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this international summons for a day of action to remember nature on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, inviting artists and creatives to stand against the ongoing loss of flora and fauna. “Our task is to help the public recall of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are naturally imaginative.”

The Birth of Remember Nature

In this way the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country produced pieces to the escalating planetary emergency. Jo Joelson, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, remembers his sense of urgency. “He had a profound 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 funding or for anyone to authorize this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

Ten years later, Remember Nature did not triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but supporters think its influence can still be felt in movements like Culture Declares and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the eco-friendliness of their methods. This is the reason she is reviving it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Part of the featured creators participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and other notable figures. They have all produced imagery, shared messages, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on the fourth of November next year.

Sowing Change

Interviewing one participant, she is out in a field in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will create a coiled garden. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. As she explains, the design and cultivation sessions have already included learning about measurements (measuring out the distances between trees), biology (studying the apple’s DNA), and geography (tracing the backgrounds of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

Several the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice

“A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases red juice. Every one carries stories behind them. The decio apple was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and hit Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more consciously engaged of nature and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was urging them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see what they’re called and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Across the Country

Within the city, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will engage visitors exploring Tate Modern on a journey to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in the past decade. Each glacier will be drawn on the exhibition spaces using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a reading will be held to honor that individual formation.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, a creative will be hosting a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a communal feast, prepared with organic, local produce. Over in Newcastle, an artist is broadcasting her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers begin a project to use music to heal flora in a local park.

Children’s Voices

Similar to other artists, another participant will be working with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is hoping to cover an art space in children’s artwork that capture their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Youthful expressions are impactful because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and it may stimulate a awareness of obligation from everyone. Youth is pure. They have fears about the future. But let’s not make it about worry – it should be about hope and our responsibility that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

Another artist’s work also appeals to children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves drawing birds and then dressing up as them – and for Remember Nature day he is aiming to tackle an iconic figure. He is also staging a walking tour of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his ongoing series over the past twenty years. This endeavor commenced following he experienced three incidents of discrimination on a single day. In response, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the location of every incident and record it – the project has since expanded to include incidents experienced by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “It seems pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

The artist selected the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its name derives 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 4 November is to plant pansies at new locations and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while discussing with those on the walking tour about the occurrences and his recollections. “I’ve recorded quite a few following earlier installations,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

Harfleet hopes his work – and