In the 1980s Williams worked mainly in a studio in Florida. During these years he produced three of his best-known series of paintings: "Shostakovich", "The Olmec-Maya and Now" and "Cosmos". After his "Shostakovich" exhibition at London's Commonwealth Institute in 1981 received scant coverage in the national press, art critic Guy Brett wrote in "Index on Censorship": "Aubrey Williams is able, to paint with epic power on a large scale. His paintings are a rare thing — a remarkable homage of one artist to another, and also of one medium to another. I felt his exhibition was a tonic to the whole art scene here, regardless of where one places oneself in the movement of styles and ideas. Yet it passes with virtually no comment in the cultural press. ...Yet he has lived and worked in Britain since 1954! It begins to be clear what Williams means when he describes himself as an 'exile' in this country, and how his situation is linked with the way the cultural establishment here boycotts artists who don't fit in with a traditional image of British art."