Goblins run riot in these pixelated paintings from Dayoung Cho

In Dayoung Cho’s illustrated world, it’s the Goblin Olympics and the bunny’s on top. Tumbling top-to-tail with the tiger, it’s cheered on by an amorphous cyclops whilst a duck-billed platypus and rhino await their turn in the ring.

At first glance Dayoung’s bright block colours cast her work as merely pretty pictures of idyllic urban life, but then you notice the hazy edges and pixellated backgrounds and realise everything is not as it seems. Something is awry. These jagged mountains and skyscrapers, fuzzy goblins and bedroom furniture add a layer of mystique to the paintings, making them part children’s book illustration, part early video-game. She’s captured the feeling that maybe, if you turned around quickly enough, the lamp-posts might be moving and the postbox might’ve swivelled around and you’d discover you’re playing a universal game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.