A Melb Artist Salvaged The Door From The Kath & Kim House And That’s One For The ‘Istory Books

Melbourne artist James Lemon salvaged the door from the iconic Kath & Kim house before it was demolished. Talk about an iconic piece of Australian history.

In case you missed it, the house from Kath & Kim is being demolished and thus ending an era in legendary Aussie television. The house was rented by the ABC between 2002 and 2007 but sold in 2016 for a cool $1,485,000.

Lemon went to see the site and saw the door was going to be thrown away, so salvaged it. He told PEDESTRIAN.TV about what he saw at the demolition site. Kath & Kim fans, guard your hearts.

“It’s like the entire building had been degloved and just left there. There were tiles everywhere, there were planks of wood, there was a wall that had caved in,” James Lemon said.

“It was just a real nightmare. It felt really final, I think that’s what it was.”

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Even though Kath & Kim ended over a decade ago — yes I feel old, no I don’t count the movie in that — the demolition of the house truly feels like the end of an era.

Lemon described why exactly the door appealed to him, aside from the fact that it was largely intact.

“My favourite thing about this door is that it’s so shit,” he said.

“It’s made of MDF, it’s very much of its time and I never would have thought that I would look at a door with kind of a sense of preciousness about it. But here I am,” Lemon continued.

He highlighted the fact that Kath & Kim is ultimately a really loving — though hilarious — look at the everyday. Maybe that’s why it’s stayed lingering in our consciousness for so long. I mean, try saying “chardonnay” normally. You can’t, can you?

“[Kath & Kim] really does paint this earnest and soft depiction of the mundane in a way that media often doesn’t. Often it’s about action and drama and all that stuff,” James Lemon said.

“And [Kath & Kim] is literally about like, waiting for Telstra. What a beautiful story about the human condition, you know?”

He said he ultimately wants the door to be properly conserved as a piece of history.

“I would love the object to be admired publicly. I think that’s hopefully its future. For the right museum, I think it would be a really interesting addition to the archive,” he said.

“I think that material culture is interesting and important and it tells stories. And I think that this object definitely does tell a story.

“Earnestly, I had this dream that I was going to get rich one day… and I was going to buy the Kath & Kim house and I was going to restore it to its former, clowning glory.”

Maybe it’s time for a publicly funded Kath & Kim heritage museum? I’d like to see that in the Election promises please.

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