Nightshift is the latest series of photographs by Bangkok-based Australian photographer Rick Martin who has previously exhibited three series of work at John Batten Gallery: Cha Chan Teng (photographs of Hong Kong’s old cafés - 2003); Helpers (photographs of the interior rooms/accomodation of Hong Kong’s domestic helpers - 2003); Beautiful City (a narrative series of photographs of two typical Hong Kong places: the Mido (Chinese: ‘Beautiful City’) Café in Yau Ma Tei and Neptune 2 Disco in Wan Chai - 2001). The Sukhumvit area of Bangkok is infamous: a strip of bars, tourist hotels, go-go clubs and discos - adding to the city’s notorious reputation. In 2004, Thailand’s Thaksin government imposed a compulsory nightly 2am closing on all of Bangkok’s bars. However, the Sukhumvit area sees a remarkable nightly 2am transformation - indoor bars close and entrepreneurial vendors wheel out portable bars (replete with a full range of bar drinks) onto Sukhumvit’s main street - the indoor parties move outside and the street becomes the new party venue. Witnesses to this daily 2am scene will discover sidewalk restaurants, druggies, lechers, mirrored flop hotels, child flower vendors, drinkers, late-night street diners, transvestites, drunks, voyeurs, wide-eyed tourists, bemused straights, beggars, and, negotiable bar-girls - all amongst the tee-shirt and tacky-memento selling which is Sukhumvit’s roadside human bazaar. Rick Martin’s Nightshift depicts it all. This fascinating exhibition - for all viewers - will present Rick Martin’s complete series of 32 Bangkok black and white photographs, and, as a contrasting visual counter-point, 10 colour photographs of the clinically clean bedroom interiors of Korean love hotels. Rick Martin’s Nightshift was photographed during 2004 and is his very latest body of work.