The MP for Kingston and Surbiton was among those at the opening night of a retrospective of the late Sheldon Williams in a Kingston church.

Ed Davey MP attended the opening night called “Chernobyl” at the All Saints Church in Market Place on Monday, September 3.

The exhibition features 40 abstract paintings capturing an emotional reaction to the horrors of the Chernobyl explosion of 1969.

The artist, Mr Williams was a pacifist and longtime objector to nuclear technology and militarism.

The exhibition was staged by the artist’s son, Louis, nearly 30 years after it was exhibited in the Ecology Gallery where it had been launched by Ken Livingstone MP.

Louis said he’d been motivated to stage the exhibition by recent news headlines and to warn against the perils of nuclear proliferation, as a reaction to the “world being in such a bad way”.

Louis, who drove to Normandy to buy French wine especially for the opening night, said he thought the evening had been a success.

He added: ”My dad had a lot of feeling in protesting the accident, how it should never have happened and how it should never happen again.”

Mr Williams, whose pseudonym was Oscar, died of a heart attack in 1994. He was an art critic who had written for publications such as the New York Herald Tribune and Penthouse Magazine.

The exhibition is free and runs at All Saints Church until September, 15, every day from 10am until 4pm.