KAIJERN KOO
SERIOUS THINGS
8 July - 5 August 2023

Games, like most things, present an emulation of some aspect of existence. Scenarios of fantasy, chance, real estate, elite parties, and ornithology are contained to the span of a tabletop and delineated with goals and rules, kept alive by belief. They turn the ordinary into theatre, where all cynicism is suspended, and meeples (the name for the small figurines which represent each player on a board), become puppets, held safely on a cardboard stage.

In her new body of work, Serious Things, Koo considers the baroque ways of being which persist stubbornly beyond the historical baroque time period. Examining games as emulations of various aspects of living, and gamification itself as a survival tactic, the works here prod the simplicity of these translations and their questionable relevance in regards to performativity and its many nuances. What ensues is an illusory and theatrical jumble; a playful questioning of existential approaches which cannot eschew the baroque in all its slippery and endlessly maddening splendour.

Kaijern Koo is an artist who lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Naarm / Melbourne. She graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. She has participated in group shows held at BLINDSIDE, George Paton Gallery, Daine Singer, and the Margaret Lawrence Gallery. In 2019 she received the NGV Women’s Association Award.