EIGHTY years ago, fleeing impending nazi occupation, 10-year-old Charlotte Mayer arrived in Britain from Prague.

Her life had been turned upside down, so perhaps it is not coincidental that through her abstract work Mayer seeks, and finds, serenity in an exhilarating equilibrium of forms, where the mathematics of the spiral are the enduring vocabulary.

Monumental Turning, 2016 and Sea Scarf - both bronze

Ever-present throughout the universe, the spiral symbolises both a journey inwards and outwards and has been immortalised in the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones.

Mayer’s sculptures, currently on show at Pangolin gallery in north London, are exercises in suspended animation that invite meditation. They capture moments of precarious but elegant poise that would not last in nature or indeed life.

Joyous and celebratory but entirely spiritual and immersive, they are a gateway to inner peace, however ephemeral.

Mayer has an endearing affinity with the natural world, shaped by an idyllic childhood spent in the garden of Das Rosel Haus (The House of Roses) in Prague where she grew up before becoming a refugee.

Soothing energy abounds, captured by rhythmic geometric forms with patterns that are familiar but rarely recorded with such skill and strength.

Mayer’s fortitude stood her in good stead when, in the late 1940s, she was one of only a few women to study at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art — a time when women were not welcome in sculpture studios.

That stoicism carries over into her work and her more recent series of “nests” — of far more muscular shapes — are perpetual places of refuge that offer solace in a time of uncertainty.

Runs until April 18, opening times: pangolinlondon.com. Free.