About Us
About us
Koi Sisters was created with the future of the planet in mind by Lou Pengilly and Cath Murphy. Lou and Cath are partners in life and business.
Lou Pengilly: has been creating clothes for decades (measured Mel Gibson’s rise for his leathers in Madmax, just saying!); designed and built Teepees as a single mother in her 20’s for herself and her friends while they were standing in front of bulldozers in forests in NSW in the 80s and founded and manages her successful business Okuden despite Covid and an economic climate that has massacred the small business community. At Okuden, Lou continues to sell her own sort-after range of clothing and many more beautiful things, including the products made by Koi Sisters to fund their projects.
Lou AKA Oku, says Okuden is really a front for their free community service. For the last 15 years, Lou and her gorgeous staff have embraced people who think they are at Okuden to shop in its beautiful space. But people leave with their problems solved and maybe a tasteful gift or two. Lou is currently creating another space for people offering equine therapy on Lou and Cath’s regional property.
Cath Murphy has worked as a nurse in mental health for many years and drawn and dabbled in ceramics forever. For the last 30 years she has worked as an animator/filmmaker, where she finally found her creative utopia. Cath studied Animation at VCA Film School in 1998, then one of the top 5 film schools in the world. She won Best Overall Graduating Script for her short Like Drowning and has won numerous awards for her shorts. The awards for animations she created with marginalised people and her Social Impact Award are the ones that mean the most.
In 2010, Cath started Pollyannafilms as a social enterprise offering animation as an incidental learning and engagement tool for marginalised peeps on Pollyannafilms’ professional shorts.
Cath always says you can’t survive the millennium without digital knowledge and you can’t survive the digital world without being part of a natural one.
In her downtime , for the last 15 years Cath has grown apples and oaks as canopy trees. These magnificent trees are her environmental contribution to future-focused planting. She has used permaculture principals as part of this project with the help of her daughter Min’s pigs. From the age of 3, Min nagged Cath to get her some pigs because they were so special. Min is now a young woman who propagates and plants herself and can send a distressed pig off to sleep before it takes its parting breath.
Lou and Cath’s Koi Sisters products help to fund their environmental and socially inclusive projects which are all created on their regional property.