London street art – Broken Fingaz Crew interview

Feb 15, 2013

**Despite their name suggesting a problem with actually holding their necessary tools, **_Broken Fingaz Crew – _Israel’s pre-eminent street artists – have been conquering walls throughout the world for nigh-on twelve years. And recently they returned to the smoke to contribute some of their unique work to the East London street art scene (including down the road from my old house in Dalston). **Being lovely people they also agreed to answer a few of our questions.**

East London street art, Broken Fingaz Crew, Insider London, London walking tours

So what is the inspiration behind the name Broken Fingaz?

It’s just something that sounded cool for us when we started it in high school.

Having painted cities worldwide, where do you still have ambitions to work?

It would be great to go and paint in more undeveloped countries… Africa is a dream for us.

How much time do you spend hanging out with each other (especially when you’re not all working together)?

**A lot. We used to live in a squat together in Haifa and also shared a studio and travelled together so it was a bit crazy. Last year we travelled separately. Even though we are good friends, it was something we needed.

Do you ever have artistic differences?

Yes but generally we all love the same kind of art so it’s easy. I’m sure at one point someone will take too much acid and start creating weird abstract shit and it will be hard to collab after that….

East London street art, Broken Fingaz Crew, Alternative walking tours, Insider London

I interviewed Christiaan Nagel recently and he was singing your praises.** (indeed – there’s one of his shrooms above this latest work)** What other artists do you admire?

**A lot. Too many to mention. But lately mostly old illustration masters like Klimt, Lautrec, Lilien and Dürer.

Do you ever see your work referenced by up-and-coming artists?

In Israel we can see some of the young generation being influenced. Most of the time it’s really cool to see, sometimes they bite too much.

In your opinion what city has the best street art?

Mmm… Athens is one of the most bombed cities we’ve seen. It’s pretty crazy, you don’t see a single empty train.

How does London compare?

**London is also crazy, but in a different way. Sometimes it feels like you’re walking inside a blog. It’s cool to see a lot of good artists in one place but the hype about street art is way too much. It makes you hate it. If we lived in East London we would probably stop doing art and only do tags.