Haines’s series of portraits of men reading messages, constructed from images of various online ‘emotional labourers,’ seeks to position itself within the history of painting, particularly in the context of intimate domestic spaces. However, these are not traditional portraits aiming for a particular likeness and the spaces depicted are not home environments but simulations - the chat rooms inhabited by workers engaged in intimate transactions. These workers exist in some version of the present, the reality of which remains questionable. They are digitised bodies, whose intimacies are transacted on a global stage, speaking of avatars and virtual identities. Voyeuristically, we’ve entered into their private domain. In his video work Boy Sleeping (2017) we are taken directly into this space. Here one such labourer has fallen endlessly asleep, underscoring the strenuous effort required to earn meagre income online, all while being unaware that this deeply personal moment is visible to a wide, anonymous public.