FROM YORK TO BATTERSEA: ACCORDING TO MCGEE TAKES 2026 UP A GEAR

According to McGee is heading to Affordable Art Fair Battersea this October — and we’re arriving in London after one of the most exciting years in the gallery’s history.

York. Viborg. London.

And quite a lot of territory in between.

If 2026 has taught us anything at According to McGee, it is that a gallery no longer needs to be defined by four walls.

This year we have become more digital, more mobile and considerably more ambitious.

Our online gallery has enjoyed an extraordinary year, connecting paintings with collectors far beyond York. The US showing of BBC's masterpiece 'Best House in Town' endowed our gallery Greg McGee with a persuasive heft hitherto unseen. One client bought two large seascapes simply because 'how that guy (Greg) is not a TV presenter and a household name I do not f***ing know!', and allowing us to champion our artists every day rather than simply when an exhibition happens to be hanging. At the same time, we have deliberately kept one foot in the physical world.

Actually, several feet.

According to McGee projects and satellite exhibitions have appeared in Viborg in Denmark, at York Explore, Hungate Reading Café, York St John University and Patch York.

Different audiences. Different spaces. Different reasons for being there.

One gallery.

And now we are returning that momentum to Affordable Art Fair Battersea.

This one is a big deal.

116 GALLERIES. 20 COUNTRIES. AND THREE OF OUR FAVOURITE PAINTERS.

From 14–18 October 2026, Evolution London in Battersea Park will become home to 116 contemporary galleries representing 20 countries, collectively showing thousands of works of art.

Only nine galleries are making their Battersea debut this autumn.

It is a serious gathering of contemporary art, collectors, galleries and artists — and According to McGee will be right in the middle of it.

Our presentation focuses on three painters:

Richard Barnes

Chantal Barnes

Freya Horsley

No padding.

No attempt to fill every available centimetre.

Three painters whose work we believe deserves to be seen in this company.

"We've had an exhilarating year," says gallery co-director Greg McGee. "The online side of According to McGee has really taken off, while physically we've been able to put artwork into some fascinating spaces in York and beyond. Denmark was important. Our smaller satellite exhibitions have been important. But Battersea feels different. This is us walking into one of the biggest contemporary art gatherings in the country and saying: this is who we are."

Affordable Art Fair Battersea has scale.

The organisers describe an autumn edition bringing together those 116 galleries from around the world, alongside special exhibitions, installations and events. Fair Director Hugo Barclay has spoken of working through submissions from those galleries representing thousands of artworks.

And amongst them will be three painters with deep connections to According to McGee.

PAINT FIRST. EVERYTHING ELSE SECOND.

There is a useful amount of noise around contemporary art.

There are trends. Movements. Algorithms. Fairs. Instagram grids. Auction results. AI. Endless new ways of telling us what we should be looking at.

Richard Barnes, Chantal Barnes and Freya Horsley cut through that noise for a remarkably simple reason.

They can paint.

Richard Barnes has spent decades exploring abstraction, colour, surface and memory. His recent Tranquillitas paintings have taken him back towards concerns that first occupied him as a young abstract painter, but with a lifetime's worth of looking and painting behind them.

There is confidence in that.

His daughter Chantal Barnes attacks the canvas differently. Her paintings fizz with movement, colour and physicality. There is something wonderfully unapologetic about them: paint pushed, pulled, scraped and allowed to behave like paint.

Then there is Freya Horsley, whose work operates tantalisingly between abstraction and landscape — weather systems, light, horizons and memories of places reduced until something more emotional than geographical remains.

"The three of them have serious painterly chops," says Greg. "That's important to us. You can intellectualise contemporary art until the cows come home, but eventually a painting has to survive somebody standing two feet away from it. Richard, Chantal and Freya make work that gets better at two feet."

It is also not the first time this trio has represented the gallery on the London stage.

In May, According to McGee exhibited their work at Affordable Art Fair Hampstead — our third appearance at the Hampstead fair — where we talked about beginning a more outward-looking chapter for the gallery.

Five months later, that chapter is gathering pace.

THE GALLERY WITHOUT WALLS

When According to McGee closed the doors of its long-standing Tower Street gallery, it would have been easy to view the move as an ending.

It has turned out to be almost the opposite.

2026 has allowed us to test a different model.

Our website has become a gallery in its own right: open all day, accessible internationally and increasingly central to the way collectors discover and buy work from us.

But rather than retreating into the internet, that online success has given us the freedom to become more physical, not less.

Instead of expecting everybody to come to one address, we can take art to them.

That has meant satellite activity in Viborg, expanding relationships beyond the UK.

It has meant artwork appearing at York Explore, Hungate Reading Café, York St John University and Patch York.

Some exhibitions have been large. Others deliberately small.

All have been about putting interesting work in front of people.

York Explore, for example, became home this September to work developed through our Acomb Readers project, taking creativity generated in west York into the city centre and giving young people's artwork a significant public platform.

It is a small example of a much bigger idea.

The gallery is no longer an address.

It is a network.

Artists, collectors, institutions, temporary spaces, digital platforms and audiences can all meet in different combinations.

Ails McGee, co-director of According to McGee, says:

"We loved having a permanent gallery, but we're not nostalgic about having to do things in one particular way. This year has been incredibly liberating. We can sell a painting online in the morning, work on a project in York in the afternoon and be discussing an exhibition overseas by the evening. Then occasionally we get to put everything into a van and head for London."

YORK → VIBORG → BATTERSEA

There is something particularly satisfying about taking a York gallery to an event of Battersea's scale.

According to McGee remains proudly York-based.

But we have never believed that artists should be limited by postcode.

Nor should galleries.

"York will always be home," says Greg. "But one of the things we've tried to do this year is look outwards. You bring energy back by going away occasionally. Viborg did that. Hampstead did it. Working with different venues around York does it too. Battersea is the next leap."

And it is quite a leap.

Affordable Art Fair's three annual London fairs each bring together more than 100 galleries, with Battersea Autumn returning to Evolution London from 14–18 October. The 2026 programme includes the annual Graduates Exhibition, curated displays, workshops and a newly commissioned seven-metre-high installation by artist Charles Inge.

Against that backdrop, our job is beautifully straightforward.

Find exceptional paintings.

Hang them properly.

Let them sing.

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING

Perhaps that is the feeling we are taking into Battersea more than anything else.

Something is happening at According to McGee.

The old gallery model hasn't disappeared. We have simply stretched it.

A collector discovering Richard Barnes through a phone screen is as real to us as someone encountering one of his paintings across a crowded art fair.

A small exhibition in a York café can matter.

A collaboration in Denmark can matter.

A wall in Battersea can matter enormously.

What connects all of it is our conviction that original contemporary art remains exciting, desirable and worth making a fuss about.

So yes, we're excited.

Actually, we're very excited.

Affordable Art Fair Battersea places According to McGee among 116 galleries from 20 countries, surrounded by thousands of artworks and an audience actively looking for something new.

We know exactly what we're taking with us.

Three brilliant painters.

A gallery enjoying one hell of a year.

And absolutely no intention of taking our foot off the accelerator.

See you in Battersea.

ACCORDING TO MCGEE AT AFFORDABLE ART FAIR BATTERSEA

Richard Barnes · Chantal Barnes · Freya Horsley

14–18 October 2026
Evolution London
Battersea Park, London

116 galleries · 20 countries · thousands of artworks

York → Viborg → London

According to McGee, 2026.