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Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate important works. Recognized for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting human struggles from nuclear disarmament to plant-based living. Through a short video message, he issued a call for a international event to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on November 4th, 2015,” he announced, inviting makers and thinkers to resist the ongoing loss of flora and fauna. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore realms that are inherently creative.”

The Birth of Environmental Reflection

In this way the Nature Remembrance initiative came into being, a day when artists across the country developed works to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who supported Metzger in his later life, notes his feeling of immediacy. “There was a strong sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I just said – let’s not mess around. Let’s not wait for sponsorship or for anyone to approve this. We should proceed.”

After Ten Years

After ten years, Remember Nature may not have triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but organizers feel its influence can still be felt in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and environmental protests, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their methods. This is the reason she is restaging it to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Among the featured creators taking part currently are Yu-Chen Wang and other notable figures. They have all designed posters, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be revealed on 4 November 2025.

Planting Hope

When speaking to Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in the countryside, assisting with planting apple trees that will develop into a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. According to her, the planning and planting sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (spacing the gaps in the orchard), biology (exploring the genetic makeup), and history (researching the stories of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces red juice

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases red juice. Each has background narratives. The historical cultivar was imported by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and landed on the physicist’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 buy from a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, next time they were out, to look on the bag and see the variety and their origin. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Throughout Britain

At the capital, one artist’s Book of Loss will engage visitors looking through Tate Modern on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been lost in modern times. Each glacier will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using special pens. Each discovery, a bell will ring and a recitation will be conducted to remember that particular glacier.

Elsewhere, up in another location, Maddi Nicholson will be hosting a free exhibition about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a shared meal, prepared with regional food. Further north, a participant is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which local singers undertake a task to perform for vegetation in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Young Insights

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is aiming to cover an art space in youth creations that document their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Children’s words and images are powerful because they’re not as inhibited as grown-ups’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something distinctive and hopefully it will provoke a feeling of duty from everyone. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about worry – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’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 a local symbol. He is also organizing a itinerant journey of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his Pansy Project over the past twenty years. That ongoing series commenced following he experienced multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and record 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. “It seems birds consume them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

The artist selected the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a slur – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The intention on the event day is to place blooms at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has marked earlier, all the while talking to those on the itinerant journey about the events and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few after my previous work,” he says mournfully.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and