There is the sea, spread far and wide, and there move creatures beyond number, both small and great.
Psalm 125
Reflecting on the Sea
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About the Works
Imagine the sea, not from a distance, but within its water, looking upwards… Picture the diversity of life in the sea, and humanity’s impact.
These two powerful works reflecting on our relationship and care(lessness) for the sea are on loan to St Bene’t’s, Cambridge, before travelling to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and after being shown in Kudat, Kota Kinabalu & Kuala Lumpur.
Laut Adalah Kehidupan (The Ocean is Life, 2018) and Ratapan Lautan (Lament of the Ocean, 2025) both celebrate the beauty and diversity of sealife. In the first, the sea is mingled with plastic pollution. The second shows habitat destruction by bottom trawling, city construction, fish bombing and cyanide fishing, leaving the traditional fisherman with a line in an empty sea.
Pangrok Sulap is a Malaysian collective of artists, musicians and social activists with a mission to empower rural communities and the marginalised through art.
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Laut Adalah Kehidupan (The Sea is Life)
The extraordinary diversity of sealife is mingling with an ever-increasing volume of plastic pollution… Pangrok Sulap is an art collective in Sabah, renowned for practical help to local communities as well as for powerful imagery. Several members participate in the carving of each woodblock, and then in joyful participatory printing by the feet of dancers accompanied by music. The group highlights the major social and environmental threats to humanity. ‘Pangrok’ is the local pronunciation of ‘punk rock’, and ‘Sulap’ is a hut or a resting place usually used by farmers.
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Ratapan Lautan (Lament of the Sea)
The dolphin challenges us to see the beauty of sealife, and the scale of seabed destruction by fish-bombing, construction, the skin-diver’s cyanide, and industrial-scale bottom trawling. A lone traditional fisherman casts his line in an empty sea. “This work portrays the ocean as a wounded soul beautiful yet burdened by pollution, overfishing, and human greed. Lament of the Ocean invites us to hear the whispers of the deep, reminding us to see the sea not merely as a resource, but as life itself.”
Pangrok Sulap
St Bene’t’s Church has stood in the heart of Cambridge for over 1000 years, and living water has always been at the heart of our community — from the living water of baptism, to our ethical commitment to provide water to all who thirst.
An important part of our parish history flows from the generosity of Thomas Hobson (1544-1631), buried here in the chancel. Hobson, along with others, provided clean, fresh drinking water to the residents of Cambridge by building Hobson’s Conduit — making clean water free to all and alleviating suffering for many in our city.
These two powerful artworks by the Malaysian artist’s collective Pangrok Sulap surround our water-filled font and speak to our universal human relationship with water — our dependence on water, as well as the challenge to be trustworthy guardians and stewards of Creation. We hope these works will inspire you to reflect on our very human connection to water, and to take action as guardians of the environment.
We are very grateful to Claire Barnes, Laura Fan, Professor Rebecca Kilner, the Department of Zoology and CCI, for making this exhibit possible.
A Conduit of Hope
