Down past a petrol station, which glows neon in the dark, through a plier-cut mesh fence, there’s a PVC strip curtain spray painted with a huge yellow smiley face indicative of the acid house music that pumps and hums behind it. This is not in a field in Manchester in the early 1990s, but, weirdly, the Saatchi Gallery in summer 2019.

The Chelsea institution’s latest exhibition is called Sweet Harmony: Rave Today, and is an immersive retrospective all about the acid house rave scene that swept through the UK and Europe at the tail end of the 20th century in the wake of Ms Margaret Thatcher’s government, and features everything from a wall of pristinely preserved rave flyers from the era to a rotating upside-down car that hangs from the ceiling. Compiling work from photographers Mr Tom Hunter, Ms Vinca Petersen, Ms Chelsea Louise Berlin, Ms Seana Gavin and Mr Dave Swindells, who documented the unabated joy of the rave scene in Britain and beyond, Sweet Harmony is the first exhibition of its kind.

Some of the most striking images from the exhibition come from Mr Derek Ridgers, who is known for his pictures of subcultures from skinheads to the New Romantics. Generally, photographing these raves was incredibly difficult, explains Mr Ridgers. “There were no lights, thousands of people, and you couldn’t really even move. Most of them were in muddy fields, and you probably needed to have a slight augmentation to your psychology to have had any fun at all. And I was always quite straight and never took drugs, so I just stood there and took these pictures.”

One of these pictures – which serves as the lead image for the exhibit – features a man standing quite still, with his eyes closed, and surrounded by dancers at a Spiral Tribe rave. With his head raised to the sky and his hands together, it could be an ecclesiastical painting, but is instead a young man having what looks to be a very nice time in a field in Uxbridge in 1993. “My usual approach in my photography was to look for characters, but the thing about the rave scene was that the scene was the character,” says Mr Ridgers, contrasting the collective spirit of rave with standout individual figures of the 1980s such as Messrs Leigh Bowery and Steve Strange.

Despite not partaking in the parties himself, Mr Ridgers made for the ideal observer, and somehow managed to stay up all night regardless. “It was an incredibly friendly scene, and everyone was just happy to be there,” he says. In post-Thatcherite Britain, acid house provided its devotees with a space to have a good time. Was it a complete escape from reality? “Not really,” shrugs Mr Ridgers. “I think people just liked to go and have a dance.”

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