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Back in 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate significant endeavors. Famed for introducing art that erases itself, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting human struggles from peace activism to plant-based living. In a brief video message, he made a plea for a global day of action to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to reflect on the environment on November 4th, 2015,” he announced, encouraging makers and thinkers to oppose the continuing disappearance of living beings. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are inherently creative.”

The Creation of Remember Nature

Thus the Nature Remembrance initiative was established, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, recalls his sense of urgency. “He had a strong sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – we must act now. Let’s not wait for financial support or for anyone to green light this. Take action immediately.”

Ten Years On

After ten years, the project may not have triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but organizers feel its influence can still be felt in movements like artist-led declarations and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how artists approach the environmental impact of their work. For this purpose she is restaging it to commemorate its 10-year anniversary. Among the featured creators involved this time are Cornelia Parker and prominent artists. Each has created visual art, shared messages, and produced installations set to be unveiled on 4 November 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with one participant, she is out in a field in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will grow to form a circular grove. Working with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and half educational workshop. According to her, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about maths (measuring out the distances between trees), science (discussing the apple’s DNA), and origins (mapping the journeys of how distinct varieties were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. They all have histories attached. The decio apple was imported by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that fell from a tree and hit Isaac Newton’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more consciously engaged of nature and the power we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was urging them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see what they’re called and their origin. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Throughout Britain

In London, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will involve participants exploring a major gallery on a mission to find the ice masses that have been lost in modern times. Each glacier will be depicted on the gallery’s windows and walls using special pens. When located, a alert will occur and a performance will be performed to remember that particular glacier.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, an artist will be presenting a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as organizing a communal feast, prepared with organic, local produce. Further north, an artist is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a local park.

Children’s Voices

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is planning to fill a cultural venue in youth creations that express their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Kids’ art are impactful because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “The contributions of youth to the world is something quite unique and it may inspire a feeling of duty from each person. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But this shouldn’t be about worry – it should be about hope and our responsibility that they have a tomorrow.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves sketching winged creatures and then dressing up as them – and for the event he is intending to represent an iconic figure. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his long-term work over the last two decades. That ongoing series started after he faced several events of discrimination on a particular day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the location of every incident and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to incorporate experiences shared by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the clear connection – it has long been a derogatory label – 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 Remember Nature day is to plant pansies at additional sites and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the occurrences and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few after my previous work,” he says sadly.

Advancing Positively

He desires his work – and