Jun Shirasu came to Portugal for the first time in 1998 at the invitation
of Ratton Gallery and artist Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, his engraving
teacher at The Slade School of Art in London, to support an artistic project
in tiles at the Pragal train station, a work of large proportions which
Ratton had commissioned the engraver Bartolomeu. Based on texts by Fernão
Mendes Pinto, Bartolomeu dos Santos created 5 large tile panels which depict
the arrival of the Portuguese in the Chinese Sea and Japan. Jun made the
Japanese characters and suits. Since this first project, Jun Shirasu has
worked regularly with the gallery since 1998, and whose work we have been
keen to promote and disseminate. Especially notable in this connection were
two individual azulejo and engraving exhibitions at the Ratton Gallery in
Lisbon (2002 and 2008), a Scholarship for Artist Development by Orient
Foundation with credentials of Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos and Ratton
(2004-2005) as well as the azulejo panels installed at Palmela railway
station (commissioned and produced by Ratton), for which Jun Shirasu was
awarded the 2010 Joana Abranches Pinto Award, presented to him by the
Portuguese embassy in Japan in 2011. After that, with Ratton support, Jun
had a Scholarship for Artist Development by Orient Foundation (2016-2017),
two important exhibitions Voyage of the Camelia at Ratton Gallery and a retrospective Tile in Travel. 1998 > 2015 at Orient Museum (2017) and the settling of the mural Voyage of the Camelia as public artwork in Vila Nova de Gaia (2018). In 2024 Gallery Ratton
proposed to Institute Camões to the responsible, Prof Helder Macedo and
Prof. Margarida Calafate Ribeiro, of the nº 28 Camões Magazine the
reproduction of the image of eleven tile panels that integrated the
mural Voyage of the Camelia and represent the travel of Camões in his way back. This year is the 500
commemorations of Camões.“
Ratton Ceramicas 2025
