Jun Shirasu CV in Portugal

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