THREE PAINTERS. ONE MORE LONDON CHAPTER.

Richard Barnes, Chantal Barnes and Freya Horsley return with According to McGee at Affordable Art Fair Battersea

York → Hampstead → Battersea.

Some artists you exhibit once.

Some become part of the story.

This October, According to McGee returns to London for Affordable Art Fair Battersea, and we’re taking three painters who have become central to the gallery’s increasingly outward-looking 2026: Richard Barnes, Chantal Barnes and Freya Horsley.

After exhibiting the trio at Affordable Art Fair Hampstead earlier this year, returning with them to Battersea feels less like repetition and more like progression.

Same three painters. New work. Bigger conversation.

From 14–18 October, Evolution London in Battersea Park will host 116 galleries from 20 countries and thousands of contemporary artworks.

In amongst all that noise, our proposition is deliberately simple.

Three painters. No passengers.

These are artists we know, artists our collectors respond to, and — crucially — artists whose work refuses to stand still.

Gallery co-director Greg McGee says:

“Going back to Affordable Art Fair with Richard, Chantal and Freya was an easy decision. They’re three completely different painters, but all three have that thing you can’t manufacture: the work has presence. Put it on a wall and it holds its ground.”

RICHARD BARNES: STILL MOVING FORWARD

There would be something deeply suspicious about describing Richard Barnes as an established painter if that implied he had settled comfortably into an established style.

He hasn’t.

And that is precisely the point.

Barnes has spent decades investigating abstraction, landscape, colour, memory and the physical possibilities of paint. His recent work has included the increasingly sought-after Tranquillitas paintings, which reconnect with ideas first explored during his early years as an abstract painter.

But these aren't exercises in nostalgia.

Richard Barnes doesn’t revisit the past. He interrogates it.

There is a confidence to the newer paintings that comes from decades of looking, editing and knowing when to stop. Marks appear effortless because the thinking behind them isn’t.

At a time when images are generated, consumed and discarded at extraordinary speed, Barnes offers something slower.

Something made.

Something considered.

Something worth standing in front of.

CHANTAL BARNES: PAINT BEHAVING BADLY

If Richard’s paintings can contain stillness, Chantal Barnes brings a different sort of energy.

Her paintings push, scrape, collide and fizz.

Colour is allowed off the leash. Paint is permitted to remain gloriously, unapologetically paint.

No beige. No brakes. No apologies.

Chantal’s work has become increasingly collectible, but what interests us most is that commercial success hasn't made the work safer.

Quite the reverse.

There is a physicality to the way she paints — an instinctive understanding of surface combined with an increasingly sophisticated command of composition.

Greg McGee says:

“Chantal has a wonderful disregard for politeness when she paints. There is intelligence underneath it, obviously, but the paintings never feel over-managed. They feel alive.”

The relationship between Richard and Chantal — father and daughter, painters with studios near one another, occasional collaborators and persistent artistic sparring partners — adds another layer.

They share DNA.

Their paintings don't.

FREYA HORSLEY: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LAND AND MEMORY

And then there is Freya Horsley.

Horsley occupies that tantalising territory between landscape and abstraction.

Sea, horizon, weather, mist, coast and light are present, but rarely pinned down.

These aren't paintings that tell you where you are.

They remind you what it felt like to be there.

That distinction matters.

Freya has long been one of According to McGee’s most successful painters because her work manages something deceptively difficult: it is immediately seductive without ever becoming easy.

Look again and things shift.

A horizon becomes a mark.

Weather becomes colour.

Landscape becomes memory.

The paintings retain just enough of the world to let the viewer in — and just enough ambiguity to make them stay.

PAINT FIRST. EVERYTHING ELSE SECOND.

Contemporary art has never had more surrounding noise.

Algorithms. AI. Trends. Auction prices. Instagram. Theory. Branding. Content.

All useful.

None of it can rescue a bad painting.

That is one reason we keep returning to Barnes, Barnes and Horsley.

Eventually, the work has to survive the wall.

All three are painters in the fullest sense of the word. They understand material, surface, scale and the peculiar alchemy that takes place when colour and gesture meet canvas.

They also understand that a successful formula is something to escape from, not endlessly reproduce.

Ails McGee says:

“What connects them is courage. None of the three is interested in producing a greatest-hits version of themselves. Every new collection moves somewhere. As a gallery, that keeps us interested — and our collectors notice it too.”

YORK → LONDON

Their return to Affordable Art Fair also reflects the year According to McGee has had.

We remain proudly rooted in York, but 2026 has seen the gallery become increasingly mobile.

Our online audience has grown. We have exhibited and collaborated in spaces across York and further afield, including projects in Viborg, Denmark, while continuing to develop a model in which the gallery is no longer defined by one permanent set of walls.

Hampstead was an important part of that.

Battersea is the next one.

York is home. The horizon is considerably wider.

Affordable Art Fair gives us an opportunity to put artists we believe in front of collectors from across Britain and overseas — and then bring that energy back with us.

Because looking outwards has always been healthier than looking inwards.

And these three painters deserve the biggest possible audience.

BACK FOR ANOTHER ROUND

There is something satisfying about returning to London with exactly the same three names.

We know them better.

Collectors know them better.

And, most importantly, the paintings have moved on.

That is what artists are supposed to do.

So, this October:

Richard Barnes.

Chantal Barnes.

Freya Horsley.

Three artists with longstanding connections to According to McGee.

Three painters at very different points in very different journeys.

And three very good reasons to find us in Battersea.

Same gallery. Same belief in painting. Absolutely no standing still.

ACCORDING TO MCGEE AT AFFORDABLE ART FAIR BATTERSEA AUTUMN 2026

Richard Barnes · Chantal Barnes · Freya Horsley

14–18 October 2026
Evolution London
Battersea Park, London

Three painters. One wall at a time.