Open calls aren’t the problem. Magical thinking is, says Greg Rook.

Artists complain about open calls. They’re expensive. They’re exploitative. The judges don’t know what they’re doing. The same artists get selected every year. They’re just another way of extracting money from people already struggling to make a living.

Some of that is true, but not all of it. The problem isn’t that open calls exist. The problem is that we’ve become bad at distinguishing between the ones worth entering and the ones that exist primarily because artists are willing to pay.

As public funding continues to shrink, many organisations genuinely need submission fees to survive. Exhibitions cost money. Staff costs money. Insurance, transport, installation, marketing and venue hire all cost money. A £20 per work submission fee isn’t automatically a scam. What matters is whether that £20 is helping to produce an exhibition worth being in.

That sounds obvious, but artists don’t always ask the simple question – do you actually want your work hanging there? Before entering anything, spend a while looking at previous exhibitions. Ignore the press release and promises. Look at the walls. Imagine your painting, sculpture or photograph among that work. Does it feel credible? Would you be pleased if someone came across your work in that context? If not, you’ve probably just saved yourself £20.

Then look at the selectors. Not because famous judges necessarily make better decisions, but because they tell you what kind of conversation you’re entering. Do you know them? Do you respect them? Even if you disagree with their taste, do you believe they’re paying proper attention? If the answer is yes, rejection becomes much easier to live with. If the answer is no, why are you paying for their opinion?

When I was an art student in the late nineties, entering the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition was considered very naff. It was where enthusiastic amateurs, Sunday painters and retired managers from the Home Counties went to exhibit. Serious artists certainly didn’t. Then, a few years later, something changed and I decided I would deign to apply. The Royal Academy immediately rejected me. Then rejected me again the next year. And, if memory serves, rejected me a third time for good measure. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Institutions change. Reputations change. So do our own prejudices. The exhibitions we dismiss at 25 often look different at 35. Equally, some of the supposedly prestigious opportunities lose a little of their shine once you’ve looked closely.

Take the John Moores Painting Prize. For years I’ve thought of it as the Oscars of British painting. I’ve made the second round three times without ever reaching the final exhibition, which is a particular kind of disappointment – close enough to daydream about exhibiting and winning. But when I visited the exhibition last year, I found myself unexpectedly underwhelmed – too much work in gloomy rooms. There were artists I admired and paintings I genuinely loved, but I also realised something I’d probably known all along. Getting in doesn’t change your life. Winning doesn’t necessarily change your life either.

Looking back through previous winners and finalists confirms it: some have gone on to remarkable careers, most others haven’t. Plenty of exceptional painters have never been selected. Plenty of selected artists disappear almost immediately afterwards. We like to imagine these exhibitions as gateways, but mostly, they’re just exhibitions.

That’s worth remembering, because artists have a habit of investing open calls with magical powers they simply don’t possess. As though one acceptance letter will finally unlock the career that’s been waiting just outside the door. It almost never works like that. And yet… I still think they’re worth entering. Not all of them. Certainly not indiscriminately. But the good ones, yes.

One reason is really mundane. Every submission forces you to get your house in order. You update your photographs. Rewrite your artist statement. Check your dimensions. Decide which works genuinely represent your practice rather than simply being your favourites. It’s administrative housekeeping, but artists are remarkably good at avoiding it until a deadline forces the issue.

The other reason is more interesting. The selectors will see your work and people remember things they’ve seen before. Years ago, a gallery approached me after seeing my work in three unremarkable exhibitions over the course of about a year. None of those exhibitions changed my career. None attracted much attention individually. But the first time they noticed me, they were curious. The second time they were intrigued. By the third, they were convinced enough to get in touch.

Recognition accumulates. Careers often do too. Which brings me to a piece of advice that has stayed with me for 25 years. I asked my MA tutor at Goldsmiths, Gerard Hemsworth, whether I should take part in an exhibition that I suspected wasn’t especially good. He shrugged and said, “Do it. Anyone who matters won’t see it.” And he was absolutely right. In 2002. Today I’m not so sure.

Back then, exhibitions disappeared when they came down. If the wrong people didn’t visit during those two weeks, the evidence largely vanished with the bubble wrap. Now every exhibition is photographed, tagged, shared, archived and searchable. Context travels. The company your work keeps is visible long after the exhibition itself has ended.

That doesn’t mean artists should become paralysed by caution. In fact, I think the opposite problem is becoming more common. I’ve watched artists turn down opportunities because they believe they’re already beyond them. They refuse group shows because they think they’re better than the gallery offering. They refuse regional exhibitions because they’re waiting for London. They refuse London because they’re waiting for an international gallery. Ten years later, many of them would be delighted to receive the invitations they once dismissed. Vanity is a far more effective career killer than modest ambition.

So yes, be selective. Avoid anything that asks for substantial fees after selection. That’s rarely an exhibition; it’s a business model. Be wary of brand-new open calls with no track record. Ask where your submission fee goes. If the organisers can’t explain how it’s being spent, that’s useful information in itself. Most importantly, judge exhibitions by the quality of the conversation they create, not by the promises they make, because that’s really what you’re paying for. Not validation or career transformation, just the chance for your work to enter a conversation worth joining.