🔗 Share this article

Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger embarked on one of his last significant endeavors. Known for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting human struggles from peace activism to ethical eating. In a brief video message, he issued a call for a global day of action to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on the fourth of November, 2015,” he stated, inviting cultural workers to oppose the steady eradication of living beings. “Our task is to remind people of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into domains that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Creation of Environmental Reflection

Thus the environmental art day was established, a day when artists across the country developed works to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who cared for Metzger in his last days, recalls his sense of urgency. “I sensed a great sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “My advice was – don’t delay. Let’s not wait for sponsorship or for anyone to green light this. Let’s just do it.”

A Decade Later

Ten years later, the project hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but supporters think its legacy can still be observed in campaigns like artist-led declarations and environmental protests, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their work. For this purpose she is relaunching it to mark its ten-year mark. Part of the key participants taking part currently are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. All participants have designed posters, shared messages, and developed pieces set to be revealed on 4 November 2025.

Sowing Change

Interviewing the artist, she is on site in Kent, assisting with planting apple trees that will create a circular grove. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. As she explains, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (calculating the gaps in the orchard), genetics (studying the hereditary traits), and origins (researching the backgrounds of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

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

“A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Every one carries stories behind them. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that dropped off a tree and hit the physicist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more actively aware of nature and the control we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see the variety and their origin. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Artistic Responses Nationwide

In London, one artist’s work about extinction will engage visitors looking through an art institution on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in modern times. All formations will be depicted on the gallery’s windows and walls using special pens. Each discovery, a bell will ring and a recitation will be performed to honor that specific ice mass.

At the same time, up in another location, a creative will be presenting a free exhibition about our alienation from the environment, as well as holding a community dinner, cooked from regional food. Further north, Uta Kögelsberger is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which regional performers begin a project to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, another participant will be working with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to decorate a cultural venue in children’s artwork that express their aspirations and concerns for the tomorrow. “Youthful expressions are compelling because they’re not as restricted as adults’,” she says in her public appeal. “The contributions of youth to the world is something distinctive and it may stimulate a sense of responsibility from each person. Kids are unbiased. They have concerns for tomorrow. But it isn’t meant to be about fear – it should be about positivity and making sure that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

A participant’s work also resonates for children. Drawing on past experience, his avian project involves sketching winged creatures and then dressing up as them – and for the event he is intending to represent a local symbol. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his ongoing series over the last two decades. The project started after he faced three incidents of prejudice on a one occasion. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the location of every incident and photograph it – the project has since grown to include incidents experienced by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the clear connection – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The intention on 4 November is to sow flowers at additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has marked earlier, all the while talking to those on the walking tour about the events and his memories of them. “There’s been quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Advancing Positively

The artist wishes his work – and