It looks like there’s much to be said about Debut Contemporary. They’re not the only drain though on the emerging artists bank balance. I know that the open submission is well entrenched in contemporary art culture but I’m still uncomfortable with the whole system of dependence on artists entrance fees to such an extent.
Contribution to admin costs of £10 and under is reasonably fair but when it stretches to £30 as many of them are, very few artists can afford to keep this up for a long. The argument that this amount is needed to sustain the gallery/show I don’t feel justifies the whole setup. If this is the only way the gallery or exhibition can stay open them the organisation needs to look at other ways to function. Personally there is no way I could afford to apply on a regular basis for shows such as this and I do tend to target the ones with a limit of £10 if I do apply which is rare. It would be interesting to know the fall off rate of artists a year or two out of college, running out of money and disillusioned with repeatedly paying £30 a month or more for a one in 800 chance of being selected for an open exhibition. I can imagine we lose a fair amount of talent through this process. It might be easy to point the finger at extreme cases such as Debut Contemporary but the culture of artists forking out large amounts of money for exposure seems to be a fairly regular occurrence.
