READ | Duo OKO OLO Are Our Favourite Design Foragers

With roots in interiors, furniture, and fashion design, Genevieve Hromas and Juliet Ramsey began formally collaborating as OKO OLO in 2020 (maybe we can guess why). The duo leans into re-use, material experimentation, and limiting waste. Using timber, metal, stone, mirror, ceramics, fabric, paper and found objects, they produce tight, considered collections that speak to the curiosity and breadth of their practice.

One half of the duo, Juliet Ramsey, spoke with Andy Kelly, Director of Collectible Design at Melbourne Art Fair, about OKO OLO’s invaluable friendship (stretching all the way to preschool), the strangest piece they’ve made that could be a sci-fi prop, and more.

AK: You turn normal materials into objects with real presence. What’s the most unglamorous material you’re currently obsessed with (or flirting with) that you’re trying to elevate into something people will pretend they “immediately understood”?

JR: We feel like this is just a current everyday thing for us – it’s almost a problem. Genevieve recently pulled out an old, BRIGHT yellow paper shopping bag and asked whether it would be too weird to use this as the shade on a new version of our plank lamp. We both love stuff that’s fallen in the sea and been jumbled around like old tumbled bricks, concrete. The process takes off all the edges and softens the shapes, leaving the harder parts of the aggregate protruding. Genevieve actually found a rock that has been tumbled in a river and looked exactly like a loaf of bread. We were away with friends – she proceeded to put the rock on the chopping board with bread knife to trick each person as they came in for breakfast. She was giggling like crazy every time. I’m currently in love with the protective backing paper that came on an acrylic light-box we had made. You’re meant to peel it off before use. But I just can’t. It’s covered in the company’s very 90s logo. I just want to keep it and put it on my wall. My brain has been ticking over, ‘Would anyone else in the world understand. Would Genevieve understand?’

Said backing paper. Image courtesy OKO OLO. 

AK: Your work sits in that sweet spot between functional and “I don’t fully trust it.” What’s a piece you’ve made that looks like it might be a prop from a very tasteful sci-fi film… but is actually just meant to live in someone’s home?

JR: The Luffa No.1 Composition for sure. Genevieve’s brain goes to crazier places than mine. One of the many reasons why I love her so much. She decided to get a big bunch of huge luffas and pull them together with a ratchet strap (usually used to hold down truck cargo). Then we smashed up a bit of reclaimed marble and put it on-top. We teamed it up with River Rock No.2 (One Drink Table) for our Found and Formed Collection, together they felt like an alternative R2-D2 and C-3PO. Of course no one bought it – I think it was just a bit too weird. We gifted it to our artist friend Isabella Pluta. She was obsessed with it.

  OKO OLO, Luffa No.1 Raw Composition & River Rock No.2 One Drink, 2022, Luffa cylindrica, raffia, ratchet strap, calcutta marble. H 430 x 330 x 230mm, polished stainless steel, rock, ratchet strap H 660 x 80 x 160mm. Courtesy OKO OLO.

AK: Many thanks Isabella. You work as a duo, which is already brave. What’s the most absurdly minor thing you’ve ever disagreed on in the studio, like a shade of off-white, a curve, a millimetre, and did it nearly end the friendship?

JR: We’ve been friends since preschool, so it’s been a long road together. That history gives us a huge amount of creative safety — we’re thick-skinned, we trust each other, and we’re comfortable rolling with decisions even when one of us is passionate and the other is a bit unsure. Early on, we made a pact that our friendship would always come first, which means neither of us is allowed to be too precious. We’re happy to knock an idea on the head if one of us isn’t into it, and happy to resurrect a rejected idea years later. Mostly, we act as each other’s measuring stick — it’s that back-and-forth that brings out our fave pieces. We do get into a bit of argy-bargy sometimes…I’m making us sound so happy. Now I’m worried we’re going to jinx ourselves…

AK: What’s your most embarrassing design habit? Like… do you hoard “good bits of timber,” keep jars of screws you’ll never use, or insist you can “feel” when something is 3mm off?

JR: Ummm yes to variations all of the above — Yikes! We can’t stop picking up weird bits of debris wherever we go. Then just leaving them around the house, which mostly makes for tripping over a lot, and for ‘don’t touch that! It’s important!’ being thrown around a lot.

Genevieve and Juliet in old family photos.

AK: What object do you think is wildly overdesigned in everyday life? And if you were forced to redesign it your way, what would you strip out… or make weirder?

JR: A lot of things feel really over-designed these days, but our actual day-to-day life isn’t like that at all and honestly, we don’t look at nearly as much contemporary design as we probably should. What I CAN say is: I met a lovely architect recently and he was kindly loving on our One Drink Table. Then, he showed me a photo on his phone of a version he’d knocked up himself out of off-cut timber. Super simply banged together — it was so great! I loved it. Highly functional, a bit rough, a bit genius! For an instant it made me just want to throw ours out the window (temporary sensation). We often design and make very quickly (because we have to), and then when it gets made again, the second or third time, we come back to it and reconsider, tweak, and redesign. We want things to be thoughtful and properly considered, but there’s also a big place in both our hearts for happenstance and just rolling with intuition.

OKO OLO, River Rock No.2 (One Drink Table). Courtesy OKO OLO.

AK: You make things that feel calm, but also slightly uncanny (in a good way). What’s a “beautiful mistake” you’ve made something that started as a disaster and ended up becoming the best part?

JR: The above question feels like it perfectly describes many moments we’ve had, from breaking parts of unfinished pieces or realising that the maker has misread the drawing / instructions and the object has come back slightly altered (but we love it). Recently, I put a newly and beautifully hand crafted top of a side table down on a junky old stool that was about to be thrown out and Genevieve says, “I love that combination”. Now, we’re about to glue it together — it’s going to be an actual OKO OLO piece!

If you had to explain OKO OLO to someone at a family BBQ who thinks ‘design’ is just cushions, what’s the one sentence you’d say… and what’s the sentence you’d want to say but absolutely shouldn’t?

JR: The blank stare we get when we try to explain what we do with OKO OLO is pretty priceless, followed by an even blanker one when we run out of words and just end up showing our Instagram. I think this type of situation has now happened SO many times that the energy to explain has run out of me… We love making our work, the enjoyment is a lot of what drives us. So, these days a shrug is all we can muster.

OKO OLO will present work at FUTUREOBJEKT, sharing Booth E19 with Naarm-based designer, Charlie White.
FUTUREOBJEKT debuts at Melbourne Art Fair, 19 – 22 February 2026. Tickets on sale now.