Director of Volta Art Fairs

English Artist and Sculptor

With over eleven years of experience in the art world, Tamila is the Director in the 20th Century & Contemporary Art Department at Phillips Auction House. For over five years she has headed record breaking Day sales that focus on bringing desirable contemporary artists onto the market. Tamila sits on the young committee of the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel.

Founder and Chairman of SAF

Howard Bilton is Chairman and founder of The Sovereign Group – one of the world’s largest privately-owned consultancies specialising in the provision of offshore trusts and companies and associated international tax advice.

Howard currently lives and works in Hong Kong.

Howard holds a joint honours degree in classics and law from the University of Keele and is qualified as a Barrister and called to the Bars of England/Wales and Gibraltar. As a visiting non-resident Professor at Texas A and M University, he assists with their LLM and Master’s degrees in International Tax and Offshore Centres. He is a regular contributor of articles to numerous newspapers and technical news wires.

In Hong Kong in 2003, Howard formed The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF), a charitable organisation also registered in Guernsey, Malta, Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom. SAF runs a range of art prizes designed to increase the exposure of artists in the region, while raising money to help disadvantaged children. SAF has raised over US$9 million and has helped thousands of disadvantaged children using expressive arts as a means of education and rehabilitation.

Howard is also the Founder and Chairman of Howard’s Folly Wines, Portugal. All wines use art on the labels and often feature work by finalists of The Sovereign Asian Art Prize of the same year. A proportion of the wine operations revenue goes to support SAF.

SovereignGroup.com

SovereignArtFoundation.com

HowardsFollyWine.com

Art market columnist for the Financial Times

Melanie Gerlis became the weekly art market columnist for the Financial Times in 2016. She was previously Art Market Editor for The Art Newspaper (2007-2016), before which she was a financial communications adviser at Finsbury in the City of London (1996-2005). She has a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University and an MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Her book, Art as an Investment?, was published in 2014 and her forthcoming book, The Art Fair Story: A Rollercoaster Ride, will be published in late 2021 (Lund Humphries).