The making of the Wilfried Zaha mural

Club

14 Jun 2023

In recognition of Wilfried Zaha’s long list of achievements in red and blue, Palace, in another collaboration with renowned British Street Artist collective MurWalls, recently unveiled a celebratory mural next to Selhurst Park.

Located near the south-east corner of the stadium, at the junction of Park Road and Holmesdale Road, close to Rothesay Road where the winger was raised, the mural depicts three of Zaha’s favourite images in a Palace shirt.

Here, Marc Silver, CEO and Founder of MurWalls, talks us through the creative process behind the mural…

“It was some time ago when we started doing street art with football clubs.

“We started being connected with lots of different people at different clubs, and we’ve now travelled all around the world. We’ve worked with the BBC and done a lot of stuff across the country, and we’ve even got a team who have recently got back from Hollywood – that’s how far it goes!

“Matt Franks and the Palace marketing team reached out to me about the same week I was going to make an approach to them – the timing was amazing. I was asked to come down and do a site visit.

“We walked around the whole area next to the stadium, looking at the houses, looking to see if we could do some kind of tribute to Wilf – a legend of the club who deserves this credit.

“The fact that he lived in a house around the corner [on Rothesay Road] was brilliant. We looked at that house and we looked at that road, but it was just a little bit too far back. We looked around and found the house at the top of the road.

“Then, it was about whether the owner will give us permission to do it – but the fact we ended up getting that wall was fantastic, and that’s where it all began really.

“At the beginning, the wall was a pebble dash wall, but if you really want detail you need a smooth surface or a brick wall. Pebble dashing is a no-go – so we needed to get the wall plastered.

“We moved onto the creative side of it, the design side of it. We got a load of images together. The club printed out some iconic Wilf images. We wanted him to be involved in it, so we laid them all out and asked him to give us his opinion.

“He chose them from a more emotional point of view – he remembers what matches those moments were from – whereas I was looking at it from an artistic point of view. It just so happens that the ones he chose were also the ones that I would’ve chosen, iconic moments which also look special.

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“I knew, as a team of artists, how we’d smash that main image. The passion on his face, the sweat… the detail was so crisp. When you’re working on these murals, normally you’re getting a motion-blurred picture, so to have something so sharp, credit to the club photographer [Sebastian Frej]. It was a fantastic image and I’m glad he chose it.

“Originally, for the other two images, it was going to be one big image and one smaller one, but we couldn’t decide. [Senior Designer] Billy Cooke at Palace played around with my design, and came up with what we’ve got, which is now what’s on the wall!

“Every mural is done differently based on who’s working on it and how much time we’ve got to make it. The quickest process is to come up at night, project the design onto the wall and mark it up in pen, ready for us to fill in over the next day.

“For this one, we did a ‘doodle grid’ – we put loads of shapes on the wall, letters are really good because there’s lots of them – and we put our design over the top, making it transparent, so we then knew where parts of the design went based on the letters.

“It confuses people quite a lot as people look for hidden messages, but it’s genuinely just words and letters – it doesn’t mean anything!

“That’s the most stressful part – marking it up. Once it’s on there, it’s just a case of building the images up in layers. I saw at the end of day one the mural was looking great, and it was only going to get better from there.

“The actual painting was stress-free and quite enjoyable. The weather was on our side with the sun out, and the gentleman who owns the house kept coming out giving us sandwiches and teas. Everyone at the club was amazing – every single department from the security to the maintenance team was really hospitable to us.

“We really enjoyed making it and it’s been pretty overwhelming how people have reacted to it. I’ve had people from the club saying ‘that’s got to be the best one you’ve done yet’ – I just think, because of the images we chose, we’re delighted with it, and I hope the fans are.

“It’s one we’re going to be very proud of. I hope it inspires the fans before every single game.”

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