In July, we ran a competition for artists across Australia to submit their work to win a month-long residency in our Gertrude St gallery, RollieX.

Our first winner was Cameron (artist name: MALACHAI), a visual artist based in Melbourne, with roots tracing back to Minneapolis, USA.

MALACHAI uses bold block colours and line work to build compositions of interlocking geometric shapes, characters and motifs.

We sat down with MALACHAI to chat about his creative process, working with interesting shapes and motifs and his love for colour.

Rollie: Our September campaign is called Block Party, inspired by the colour all around us on the streets of Melbourne: beach houses, street art, fruit crates at the market, cafes painted in primary colours. What resonates with you about a campaign built on bold colour, and why did it feel like a fit for you?

"I have such a deep relationship with colour, especially block colour, just super sharp, blocky colours. That's how I envision things, that's how I see the world pretty much. And the colours you guys chose for the campaign are usually the colours I use a lot, so it made sense to me to be a part of this.”

Rollie: Your work uses lots of colour and bold geometric shapes, characters and motifs. Where do these forms come from?

"It's an interesting story. I used to meditate a lot and I'd do it so deep that I would leave my body. The first time I really understood where the geometric patterns and shapes came from was during one of those sessions. I left my body and I saw all of those shapes there, in front of me. I'd look around and they wouldn't move, like they'd always been there. I think the shapes are always there, I just know how to tap into it and bring it from that dimension into this world so other people can see it. The only thing new is me."

Rollie: You're from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but you've set down roots and built a community halfway across the world. Why Melbourne specifically?

"When you come from where I come from to this place, you can't unsee how great it is. It's paradise for me. I came here and within the first week I knew I wanted to live here the rest of my life, because there's no place like it, at least none I've come across. The quality of life is so high, the people are super creative, super expressive, there's art everywhere. Where I'm from, you don't see graffiti because they'll clean it up within two days. Here, they let people express and they don't cover it up, they embrace it. Everything about Melbourne just said, you belong here."

Rollie: Your family in Boston has called you Malachai for as long as you can remember, but you've never really known where it came from. More recently you've adopted it as your artist name. Are there memories or moments where the name took on meaning for you? What made you decide to bring it into your art?

"My family in Boston is so sacred to me, I'm the only one in my life who has contact with them. None of my friends or family elsewhere know these people, it's a very special bubble for me. So when I hear that name, I instantly think of them. Nobody knows that name except for them. When I started doing art, I knew I didn't want to merge my life too much with it, I wanted it to be a separate thing, because it's not who I am, it's just a part of me. There was no better choice of a name than that one."

"My big cousin coined it, he'd just call me Malachai, and everyone else started joking along and it stuck. For me it stuck in my heart, because nobody's ever called me anything other than Cameron. It just fit perfectly."

Rollie: You mentioned you loved art as a child but never thought of it as a career. What made you decide to start creating professionally and selling your pieces?

"I've been doing this since as long as I can remember, drawing on the sides of my test papers without even realising my hand was doing its own thing. My teachers would hand tests back and go, ‘Cam, you failed the hell out of this, but what is all this art?’ During COVID, I couldn't go back home to Minneapolis, everything there was pretty crazy at the time, so I stayed in Melbourne and figured out how to work while everything was shut down. When I was stressed, I'd paint watercolours by myself and never show anyone. Then one of my good mates, a photographer, saw them and told me I should sell them. I thought he was joking, that stuff felt too personal. He went behind my back, took a photo, vectorised it and turned it into a print and showed me. I made a small run of pieces, posted them on Instagram and sold fifty prints in two weeks. I was broke, sleeping on people's couches at the time. That's when I realised I had something here. It brought me closer to my purpose, because I didn't know who I was at that point. Now I know who I am and what I can bring to the world and how I can help people heal."

Rollie: When we first caught up, you mentioned you have synaesthesia. Was there a moment where you first realised your relationship to colour worked differently to everyone else's? How has understanding that changed the way you work?

"When I was young, maybe grade 1 or 2, we were doing counting and maths and I kept seeing colour after the problems. Each number had a different colour to it, and colour would flash when I heard a word or pictured it in my mind. I didn't know it was unusual until around 2019 or 2020, when I met someone who was a psychologist and had written their thesis on synaesthesia. Once we'd built a friendship and they saw my art, they started putting it together. They ran a proper test on me, fifty questions, asking ‘what colour is this? what colour is that?’ then asking again later in the same sequence. I got them all right. When I told her I see words and numbers and letters in colour, she was floored. I didn't know what it was, I thought I might need to see a doctor. But it made sense once I learned what it was. No wonder I saw colours as a kid and thought it was normal, thought everyone did."

Rollie: How does synaesthesia actually translate in your day to day? Are there specific sounds that make you see certain colours? Does it shape how you approach life beyond your art? Do you ever wish you could switch it off?

"I don't see colour when I hear sound, it's only when I'm thinking of words or numbers. Say a number and boom, a colour flashes. Two is blue. Four is maroon. It's not even a regular blue, more like a dark blue and it's just for me, not something universal. The longer I sit with it, the more I think I might be saying something deeper through my art than I fully understand yet, I'm still finding my relationship with it. Colour has always been such a big thing to me, I'll play pool and instantly start seeing colour schemes, watching how colours merge with each other. I think the colours I use go a lot deeper than I've realised, maybe my soul is saying something I haven't learned yet. It's so normal to me that most of the time I don't even know I'm doing it. People don't always get it. I don't fully get it either, it just happens."

Rollie: What artists influence you, and what other influences do you lean on to create your art?

"I wasn't really into art history until later in life, I didn't even know who Basquiat was until I was 16 or 17. Since then, nobody has inspired me more. He opened the door for artists like me in modern art, in colour, in all of it. From what I understand, he made modern art what it is, and if it wasn't for him, people wouldn't appreciate it the way they do now."

"I'm full Twin Cities (Minneapolis), it shaped the way I think, the way I move, the way I talk, the way I dress. Anywhere I am, that's the first place I mention."

“In Minneapolis, Prince is our GOAT. Usually, big musicians end up in LA or New York, he stayed home and put us on his back. We embraced him heavily, he's in our hearts forever."

Rollie: What’s next for you and your art?

"So much talent comes from places like where I grew up, but it goes overlooked because of people's background or where they're from. My biggest dream is to make people go to these places and give back to them. If you want to see a MALACHAI mural one day, hopefully you'll have to come to the neighbourhood to see it and see that the people there are good people too."

MALACHAI's work is on display from 1st – 30th September at our RollieX gallery on Gertrude St.