
When you look at this artwork, what do you see? We vaguely wonder what's going on behind the curtains. Something dark?
But mainly we're feeling the peace and quiet of suburbia at night.
The artwork, titled Number 11, is part of a new exhibition titled False Sense of Security at The Lock-Up gallery in Newcastle, which opens on Saturday.
Artist Halinka Orszulok likes the contrast between "the homeliness of suburbia and the mystery of night-time".
"There's something about darkness. Even as a grown-up, we find ourselves looking over our shoulders. There is an element of danger, but I think the feeling of danger is greater than the reality," Halinka said.
She, too, is attracted to the quiet of night.
"So rarely is life quiet," she said.
"The night makes you feel more alert and aware of how you feel inside because your sense of sight is kind of compromised."
She said the Number 11 artwork "draws out that sense of being on the inside or outside".
"How does being on the outside make you feel? And homes aren't always safe places. For some people, home is the most dangerous place they can be."
Check out Halinka's website and you'll see a theme of suburbia at night.
"I first started exploring that type of scenery when I was a teenager. I'd catch trains everywhere - I lived at the Blue Mountains.
"Often I'd find myself getting off at the station and having to walk home. Going over a pedestrian bridge and seeing the highway completely free of cars was such an interesting and weird experience.
"It felt like a secret world that you enter, where other things are possible."
Halinka is also the curator of the exhibition, which features other artists including Fernando do Campo, Heath Franco, Doug Heslop, Tracey Moffatt, Gary Hillberg, Shevaun Wright and Giselle Stanborough.
The Lock-Up artistic director Courtney Novak said False Sense of Security "exposes flaws within our authoritarian structures, institutions and systems".
"Narratives such as black deaths in custody, institutional child sexual abuse, corporate surveillance, racism, colonialism and environmental degradation are interwoven throughout," Courtney said.
"Interestingly, this exhibition is presented in one of Newcastle's oldest authoritarian structures - the city's old police station and lock-up - a space that would have demanded control, authority and power from the mid 1800s."
The exhibition runs until April 11.
A Real Good Bloke
West Wallsend's Bob McGuire noticed Joe Hensel mentioned in the Newcastle Herald's In Memoriam section in Thursday's classifieds.
Joe passed away in 1983. Members of the Hunter Weight Lifting Club said in the message: "Another year gone mate, but never forgotten".
Bob said he'd seen this message published annually in the Herald classifieds for years.
"This shows the esteem he was held in back in the day," Bob said.
"He had a backyard gym in Mayfield, obviously a training place for some very good lifters that were in Newcastle at the time," he said.
"He was later involved with the gym at Wests New Lambton, I think. I only knew him for a while in the '60s when I went to the Mayfield gym (just for fitness, but it was close to the Mayfield pub). He was a real good bloke."