Red Flags to Watch for in Online Open Calls
As a painter, I submit my own work to international open calls – the same way many of you reading this do. Not every experience has been a good one. I recently paid a submission fee to a platform that, on paper, promised exactly what a serious open call should: exhibition, promotion, visibility. What I actually received made me think more carefully about what to check before paying a fee anywhere – including, honestly, at Marea Gallery.
I won’t name the platform. That’s not the point of this article, and naming names helps no one make a better decision next time. What matters is the pattern – because once you see it, you’ll recognise it anywhere.
Red flag 1: Promised promotion with no visible trace of it
The platform’s own website repeatedly stated that selected artists would be promoted through social media, a newsletter, and partner networks. Reasonable enough – until I actually looked for evidence of it. There were no visible links to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube anywhere on the site. A search for official profiles turned up nothing with any meaningful following, activity, or even uploaded content.
In other words: I was never actually promoted anywhere, despite it being one of the stated benefits I paid for. Before you submit anywhere, take five minutes to actually check. Find their Instagram. Look at the follower count and, more importantly, the engagement. A gallery that claims to promote artists but has 300 followers and no comments is not promoting anyone in any meaningful sense.
Red flag 2: An exhibition that is hard to navigate or find
When I opened the actual exhibition page, it read less like a virtual gallery and more like a long, undifferentiated webpage. There was no clear navigation toward other exhibitions, no way to browse other artists’ profiles, and no search or filtering by country, medium, or theme – the kind of basic functionality you’d expect from a platform whose stated purpose is to help collectors discover artists.
If someone doesn’t already have a direct link to your specific piece, there is almost no way for them to stumble across it.
My own piece was placed near the very bottom of a long exhibition page. A visitor would have to scroll through dozens of other works before reaching it – with no index, no jump links, nothing to help them find what they were looking for, or discover something they weren’t.
Red flag 3: The homepage is about the open call, not the art
I noticed that the platform’s homepage focused almost entirely on current open calls – deadlines, submission fees, calls to apply. Past exhibitions existed, technically, but were tucked away behind an unmarked archive page that an average visitor would be unlikely to find.
This tells you something important about who the platform is actually built for. A gallery whose homepage is about submissions, not art, is built for artists to pay to enter – not for collectors to browse and discover. There’s a real difference between a platform that exists to showcase art and one that exists to collect entry fees, even when both use the same language about curation and promotion.
What I actually want, beyond the checklist
All of this is practical, checkable, almost technical. But underneath it is something simpler, and harder to put a number on: I want to feel like the platform actually cares that I exist.
I want to be treated with respect, not processed. I want some kind of feedback – even a sentence – rather than silence followed by an invoice. I want to feel like someone looked at my work and saw me in it, not just another entry in a spreadsheet. I want to be presented well on social media, not as a thumbnail buried in a carousel nobody scrolls to the end of. I want support that continues after the exhibition closes, not just during the two weeks it’s convenient to mention my name.
I don’t want to feel like a transaction with no value beyond the fee I paid.
How much does it matter to you, as an artist, to feel genuinely supported – not just exhibited? For me, it matters enormously. It’s the difference between paying a fee to disappear into a list, and paying a fee to actually be seen by someone who treats your work, and you, as worth the attention.
What this is actually worth
None of this means the experience had zero value. Being able to write that you were selected for an international open call still carries some weight on a CV or an artist bio. But if your actual goal is for someone – a collector, a curator, anyone – to discover your work and engage with it on that platform, a poorly structured, hard-to-navigate exhibition with no real promotion is not going to deliver that.
It functions, at best, as proof that you exhibited somewhere and a permanent record online. That’s worth something – just be honest with yourself about what it is and isn’t worth before you pay.
What to check before you pay any submission fee
- Search for the gallery’s actual social media accounts and YouTube channel – check follower count and real engagement, not just whether a profile exists
- Open a past exhibition and see how easy it is to navigate – can you find individual artists, or does it feel like one long page?
- Check whether the homepage is built around art or around the open call itself
- Look for a clearly named curator – someone accountable for the selection, not an anonymous “team”
- Ask yourself: if I weren’t an entrant, would I ever visit this site to look at art?
Why this shapes how Marea Gallery is built
This experience is part of why I’m careful about how Marea Gallery presents work. Our homepage leads with current and past exhibitions, not just open call deadlines. Every edition has clear navigation to other artists and other editions. Selected artists are genuinely promoted on Instagram, Facebook, and through a YouTube video presentation of each edition – and you can check all of that for yourself, right now, before you ever submit a single piece.
I’d rather you hold us to the same standard I just described. Look us up. Check the follower count. Watch one of our edition videos on YouTube. Open a past exhibition and see if you can actually find your way around it. That transparency is, I think, the least any artist should expect before paying a fee anywhere.
Submit to the current Marea Gallery open call
Browse our current and past exhibitions at mareagallery.com/exhibitions, see the current open call at mareagallery.com/open-calls, or watch our edition videos on YouTube.