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Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate major projects. Known for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting human struggles from anti-nuclear advocacy to plant-based living. Via a concise video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to honor the environment.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this global appeal for a day of action to reflect on the environment on November 4th, 2015,” he stated, inviting artists and creatives to oppose the continuing disappearance of flora and fauna. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into domains that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

Thus the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. One of the curators, who supported Metzger in his final years, notes his feeling of immediacy. “There was a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I urged him – don’t delay. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

A decade on, the project hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but organizers feel its influence can still be observed in movements like Culture Declares and environmental protests, as well as in how makers handle the eco-friendliness of their work. That’s why she is relaunching it to mark its 10-year anniversary. Among the key participants taking part currently are A Man Called Adam and Anya Gallaccio. Each has produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and created artworks set to be unveiled on the fourth of November next year.

Sowing Change

When speaking to Anya Gallaccio, she is on site in a rural area, assisting with planting apple trees that will develop into a spiral-shaped orchard. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and half educational workshop. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (measuring out the distances between trees), biology (discussing the genetic makeup), and origins (researching the journeys of how different apples arrived in Britain).

Several the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that releases red juice. They all have histories attached. The historical cultivar was imported 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 nature and the influence we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to look on the bag and see their names and where they were grown. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Cultural Projects Nationwide

In London, one artist’s project on disappearance will involve participants exploring Tate Modern on a quest to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in modern times. Every ice sheet will be depicted on the exhibition spaces using special pens. When located, a alert will occur and a reading will be performed to honor that individual formation.

Elsewhere, up in another location, an artist will be putting on a public show about our alienation from the environment, as well as holding a community dinner, made using organic, local produce. Further north, an artist is broadcasting her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which community vocalists begin a project to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Children’s Voices

Similar to other artists, Cornelia Parker will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is planning to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in kids’ letters and drawings that document their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Kids’ art are compelling 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 quite unique and it may stimulate a awareness of obligation from everyone. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

Paul Harfleet’s work also connects with children. As a former drag queen, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then embodying them – and for the initiative he is intending to represent Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his long-term work over the recent decades. The project began when he experienced several events of discrimination on a single day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and document it – the project has since expanded to incorporate experiences experienced by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “It seems pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day 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 itinerant journey about the occurrences and his personal experiences. “There’s been quite a few after my previous work,” he says sadly.

Advancing Positively

The artist wishes his work – and