Stephen Snoddy

Stephen Snoddy (born 1959) is a British artist and gallery director.

Career Snoddy trained as a painter at Belfast College of Art where he graduated in 1983 with an MA in fine art.

Snoddy moved to Manchester in 1986 and graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Gallery & Museum Studies from the University of Manchester in 1987 and then moved to Bristol to become Exhibitions Organiser at Arnolfini Gallery.

He worked from 1987 to 1991 on an exhibition programme that included solo exhibitions by Richard Long, Giuseppe Penone, Gillian Ayres, Rachel Whiteread, Vong Phaophanit, Jannis Kounellis: Drawings, Jack B. Yeats: The Late Works (which toured to the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Haags Gemeentemuseum) and the first solo exhibition of Juan Muñoz in the UK.

In 1991, Snoddy became Exhibitions Director of Cornerhouse, Manchester, where he and other city curators established the Manchester Gallery Consortium when the Hayward Gallery brought the British Art Show 4 to the city in 1995. He also organised such shows as the first John Baldessari European Retrospective toured to the Serpentine Gallery, London and onwards onto a European tour; as founder-director where he has reviewed policies, restructured the organisation, enabled an acquisitions budget for contemporary art, opened a new 4th floor gallery, expanded the Library & Archive, developed a new sculpture terrace and increased visitor figures annually From 6 October 2012 the NAG exhibited Damien Hirst, for a year-long display. The gallery attracted 236,000 visitors during the year, almost equalling the record set in its opening year.

In 2006, Snoddy was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Previously he has been a Director of The New Contemporaries and was on the Visual Arts Committee of the British Council for 10 years, taught at numerous art colleges as a visiting lecturer and was on the working committee for the National Policy for Collecting Contemporary Art and Turning Point ACE West Midlands area group.

In 2007, along with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham who joined to become the West Midlands Consortium they are one of 5 consortium's in the UK to be awarded the £1 million Art Fund International award to purchase international contemporary art over the following 5 years, under the theme of the Metropolis - an interim exhibition Metropolis of acquisitions was launched in the Autumn of 2010. In 2009 he was a judge for the National Portrait Gallery, Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize which subsequently toured the UK.

In 2009, Snoddy was the Curator for the Art of Ideas in Birmingham. He is a Patron of Walsall College, a former Board member of Lichfield Festival, 'Pestival' and 'The Campaign for Drawing', and was on the Selection Committee for 'Artists Taking the Lead' in the North West of England and was a curatorial advisor working on Anthony McCall's Column for Wirral Waters, intended to be a part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, but which was the only 'Artists Taking the Lead' project which was not realised.

He was Director of Look11, the Liverpool International Festival of Photography and Photography, the first photography festival to be staged in Liverpool, Wandering Rocks is episode ten of James Joyce's Ulysses, and consists of nineteen short views of characters as they make their way round Dublin in the afternoon.

In addition to his career as a museum director, Snoddy has made abstract paintings. He is a member of the artist collective Contemporary British Painting and has received solo exhibitions of his work at The Roberto Polo Gallery, Brussels, 2016, The Artist Workhouse, 2016 The Rabley Drawing Centre, 2016 and Southampton City Art Gallery, 2017

Collections Paintings by Snoddy are held by the following collections:

Southampton City Art Gallery CORPO, Spain Frank Cohen Collection Hertfordshire Education Authority Lisburn Borough Council The Priseman Seabrook Collection