Although Scotland is no stranger to rain, most of us – leaking skylights aside (and I speak for myself here) – tend to only experience it outdoors. All that changes next week with Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang’s evocative solo exhibition at Glasgow’s Tramway, in which the heavens open inside the capacious gallery in a call for climate awareness.

Calling for Rain opens next week in the wake of COP26, a continuation of a vital theme, and an underlining of the need for all of us individually and collectively to take action to both understand and do our best to rectify the climate change which human actions have caused.

Samnang was born in the Svay Rieng province in Cambodia in 1982, and graduated in Fine Art (Painting) from the Royal University of Fine Arts in the capital, Phnom Penh.

His work is multidisciplinary, covering media from sculpture to installation, photography and film, his works often concerned with exploring and communicating the very real problems of human-induced climate change in Cambodia, alongside issues of colonialism and globalisation.

“Environmental degradation, including the complex influence of political and financial wrangling over the control of natural resources, the suppression of rights of indigenous communities, unchecked development, and systemic and other forms of violence, are among the urgent issues that propel my vision and creativity.

“I believe in the potency of dreams and omens, and of humour, to mediate these grave concerns,” Samnang says. It is in this vein that he collaborates extensively with the Chong people of Cambodia, one of the small ethnic groups in Cambodia outside the Khmer majority, making extensive use of their beliefs and mythologies.

His work for this Tramway exhibition is a case in point, an immersive installation and film aimed at helping children and young audiences understand the climate crisis.

The film, Calling for Rain, whose narrative is based on the story of a monkey who falls in love with a fish and travels through the landscapes of Cambodia on a quest to save the dying rainforest, doing battle with the fire dragon whose actions are responsible, may be aimed at engaging young people, but has universal appeal.

And although he is creating work for children, “I still maintain the character of my directing with some abstract masks and...a combination of classical and contemporary dance.”.

“In this story, the character of the fire dragon, Aki, represents the evil spirits [that come] to control another area with a greed for natural crops or by processing nature into its own power...There are also two other main characters: Kiri (the monkey), representing the mountain’s forest, and KongKea (the fish), representing the water.”

It is based partly in the animistic religion of the Chong peoples, who worship the spirits of forest animals, and celebrate the “cooperative and spiritual relationships between species and rain forest.”

Deforestation and rampant development threatens both the cultural and living traditions of indigenous communities in Cambodia, as elsewhere, and it is this that Samnang wishes to address, his characters filmed in areas that are subject to degradation or over-development.

“Before making this story, I studied children’s thinking, especially [that of] my daughter,” says Samnang, whose work, whilst serious in intent, often uses humour. When he was working on the film, he took his daughter out of town to a waterfall with one of the dancers, who plays the Kiri character in the story.

“What kind of relationship did my daughter have when Kiri played the role of a monkey in real nature? What did it bring back to the children who saw this performance?”

Elsewhere in the installation, two 11 metre long curtains will create the sense of walking in the rain, something very pertinent in Cambodia where the serious issue of drought affects both people and wildlife. Samnang first created the installation in part at home.

“When I made a virtual rain in front of my house, many children came to enjoy the rain, as if they really needed the rain, and they made a loud, cheerful noise. It’s lovely.”

“At the end of the film, I embedded the question, how should we all deal with this? The story also shows that only expression and solidarity can prevent bad things.”

It is the actions of the characters, choosing to make things better, that brings about change, and makes Samnang’s film one of positivity, showing what can be achieved if people work together and take action. “At the end of the story, after the rain, the earth was refreshed, and the wildlife, the animals, and the people were refreshed, and they grew and reaped as happily as ever.”

Khvay Samnang: Calling for Rain, Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, 0845 330 3501 www.tramway.org 19 Nov - 6 Mar 2022, Tues - Fri, 12pm - 5pm; Sat/Sun,

12pm - 6pm

Critic's Choice

Finding herself one of those during lockdown who had isolation and time on her hands, artist Sue Barclay, formerly Biazotti, who had not made any art for some five years, returned to making, gradually but surely, in a new light. The “One World” series, which will go on display at Partick's Nicolls from next week, comprises stripped-back paintings and a collection of collaged and painted wooden bangles – ideal Christmas presents, if they take your fancy – which Barclay developed using a more limited colour palette. Her painting process, perhaps as a result of the time and focus occasioned by lockdown, was drawn out, working in to the sheets of paper repeatedly, cutting in to the works with scissors, her studio littered with shapes, until she began to work them in to stand alone artworks. Barclay terms them “painted collages”, a series of ciruclar and other shapes that evoke fish-like forms.

“I have often found myself drawn to working with individual pigments in order to explore their essential nature,” she says . “I welcomed the part chance played in this work; in the painting process, the freely cut shapes and the way that the final images and series of works came together.”

The wooden bangles are again made with painted paper shapes pasted on to the bangles, the two series worked on at the same time. “There is a direct relationship between both ways of working and I have thought of the bangles as circular artworks created intuitively as I work my way around the circular form.”

Sue Barclay: One World, Nicolls, 656 Dumbarton Rd, Thornwood, Partick, Glasgow , 0141 334 2728 www.nicollsglasgow.com 19 - 24 Nov, Thurs, 4pm – 8pm; Fri, 2pm – 7pm; Sat, 12pm – 6pm; Sun, 12pm – 5pm. For events, including artist talks, see website.

Don't Miss

Byron might take the headlines in this exhibition marking the 200thanniversary of the Greek Revolution of 1821, but this is a story of the distant echoes of Greek inspiration in Edinburgh, the “Athens of the North”, and the long fought battle by the Greeks to overthrow Ottoman rule, to which there is far more than the tale of a poet who took on the mantle of a revolution. Alongside historic material, Karen Cunningham has been comissioned to create a two-part work entitled Parataxis in textile and moving image, “referencing women and their experiences in late Englightenment Edinburgh and in Greece of the time,” a small attempt to write the wrongs of the historical record.

Edina/Athena: The Greek Revolution and the Athens of the North 1821 - 2021, Exhibition Gallery, Edinburgh University Library, 30 George Square, Edinburgh, Until 29 January 2022, Mon - Sat, 9am - 4pm https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/classics/about/leventis/leventis-2021/exhib