Tanya O’Neill was invited to speak alongside sound and intermedia artist Phil Dadson at the TSB Wallace Arts Centre last weekend. The talk named ‘Touching Base: Art and Science on Antarctic Desert Pavement’ was part of a three month long Antarctic exhibition Elusive Earth: Refined Images of Antarctica, which features representations of Antarctica by seven contemporary New Zealand artists, who have travelled to the continent with assistance from Antarctica New Zealand under the Artists to Antarctica Programme. The aim of the exhibition talk was to come at the intricacies of the desert pavement from their own particular angles and expertise as Tanya and Phil discussed aspects of their research work in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. “Taking stage with an artist was a new experience for me and certainly gave a different appreciation of how Phil sees the resilience and fragility of the Dry Valley landscape”. The exhibition closes the 24th of January 2016.