GO LONDON newsletter Bringing our city to your living room Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive the best London offers and activities every week, by email Update newsletter preferences

How do you get the attention of the fiercely anonymous Banksy? You “Banksy Banksy”. That’s the advice of California-based art teacher Jeff Gillette, who is in London for the opening tomorrow of his exhibition inspired by the graffiti artist’s apocalyptic Dismaland theme park.

The origins of Gillette’s Post-Dismal show date back to 2006, when Banksy staged his Barely Legal exhibition in LA. The headline act was a live, painted elephant, and Gillette’s friends insisted he get involved. “I had some collectors egg me on, saying ‘You gotta go Banksy Banksy. You gotta go put one of your pieces in his show’.” Gillette got around the stringent security by sticking his painting down his shirt. “And I went into the room with all his stencil paintings, so I just stuck it in between two of them and got my picture taken.”

It’s the kind of move of which you imagine Banksy — famous for leaving his trademark stencilled graffiti as a calling card, most recently at a Bristol primary school — would have approved. The same holds for the subject of Gillette’s illegal addition to Barely Legal: a subversive take on Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe. In Manet’s original painting a naked woman poses between two clothed men at a picnic. In Gillette’s version these men are Taliban fighters, the woman is wearing a burka and their feast of fruit and cheese is a McDonald’s meal. Now Gillette, 56, fantasises that Banksy stole the work for himself. “The painting disappeared half an hour later,” he grins. “Ever since then I’ve kidded that he’s my collector!”

Why would the globally renowned Banksy be interested in a little-known Orange County art teacher, a dead ringer for a lesser-haired Jeff Lebowski? Because Gillette’s work happens to be the principal inspiration behind Banksy’s biggest project to date: last summer’s Weston-super-Mare-based Dismaland. Gillette put on a show called Dismayland in 2010 — five years before Banksy’s theme park was announced. Then last year Banksy got in touch with Gillette, asking him, along with other artists, to come and help on the project. Gillette and his artist wife Laurie Hassold made the Mickey Mouse ears worn by the Dismaland workers. A canny way of Banksy preventing a lawsuit from Gillette, perhaps. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, imitation followed by incorporation of the original is an ingenious legal manoeuvre. Because it’s not just a case of similar names. Gillette has been satirising Disney and its characters since 1990: think dead Mickey Mouses imposed upon apocalyptic landscapes, and bestiality involving Pluto the dog. It’s far from PG-rated.

A visit to the slums of Calcutta in 1982 was the first call to subversive arms for Gillette, a proud pessimist. The idea of painting the scenes he saw in Calcutta “incubated” until he moved to California from Michigan and found himself drowning in cutesy cartoon animals. “Disney is saturated, it’s on billboards everywhere,” he says. Yet Gillette thinks Disneyland’s self-promotion as “the happiest place on earth” is “absurd”. “You know, you talk to the people who spend $100 to get there, parking, and then it’s crowded, like the subway here. I hate it; I went back a couple of weeks ago and I was miserable.” I suggest all the people inside the character costumes are alcoholic depressives and he guffaws. “God knows what’s inside there!”

Gillette’s first dabbling with Mickey and co was a painting of a Calcutta slum on which he screen-printed upside down Mickey Mouses. Another, Minnie Hiroshima, formed part of an exhibition at Dismaland after Banksy bought it via his agent, having apparently come across it in a long-ago show. Soon after, Gillette was recruited for Dismaland.

Scenes of chirpy cartoon animals imposed on a site of atomic attack might be in-your-face provocation but the question of taste doesn’t trouble a man who put on a graduate show that mixed Disney, porn and the Bible. So Gillette has no qualms about updating his apocalyptic landscapes to reflect news stories — such as adding the ticking crocodile from Peter Pan with a small child protruding from its mouth to his Disneyworld Landfill painting, a dark reference to the recent tragedy in Orlando. “Hey, four alligators died for that kid!” he protests.

One line Gillette won’t cross, though, is American politics — indeed he insists “I’m not political”. That means Donald Trump — admittedly a political caricature to begin with — is off limits. “I iconocolise stuff. I take stuff, pick at it and f**k with it. When I start messing with something, I see it as an homage. The worst dig at someone is to ignore them. If I bring something up — Disney or Dismaland — it’s a form of flattery in some way, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with it.” Gillette thinks his work is more “psychological” than political, although if that’s the case then it’s a satire on our obsessive analysis of our own psyches: “You know, maybe I had a shitty childhood”, he smirks.

“I never got to go to Disneyland so I’m just crapping on something everybody loves.”

Dismaland in pictures 10 show all Dismaland in pictures 1/10 Dismaland Grim: Dismaland from outside Claire Hayhurst / PA 2/10 Dismaland Attraction: the 'funfair' Reuters 3/10 Dismaland Dystopian: a ferris wheel Reuters 4/10 Dismaland On show: A piece by Banksy goes on display during the press view of Dismaland Yui Mok / PA 5/10 Dismaland Seaside observation: A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy PA 6/10 Dismaland Unexpected: A killer whale jumping out of a toilet piece by Banksy Yui Mok/PA 7/10 Dismaland Taken for a ride: The grim reaper rides the dodgems Yui Mok/PA 8/10 Dismaland Timely: Migrant boats at Dismaland Yui Mok/PA 9/10 Dismaland Commissioned: Big Rig Jig by artist Mike Ross Yui Mok/PA 10/10 Dismaland Bemusement Park: Dismaland Claire Hayhurst / PA 1/10 Dismaland Grim: Dismaland from outside Claire Hayhurst / PA 2/10 Dismaland Attraction: the 'funfair' Reuters 3/10 Dismaland Dystopian: a ferris wheel Reuters 4/10 Dismaland On show: A piece by Banksy goes on display during the press view of Dismaland Yui Mok / PA 5/10 Dismaland Seaside observation: A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy PA 6/10 Dismaland Unexpected: A killer whale jumping out of a toilet piece by Banksy Yui Mok/PA 7/10 Dismaland Taken for a ride: The grim reaper rides the dodgems Yui Mok/PA 8/10 Dismaland Timely: Migrant boats at Dismaland Yui Mok/PA 9/10 Dismaland Commissioned: Big Rig Jig by artist Mike Ross Yui Mok/PA 10/10 Dismaland Bemusement Park: Dismaland Claire Hayhurst / PA

Disney is legendary for being fiercely protective over its trademarks — how has Gillette got around that? He invokes “fair use” — the US legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from rights holders — but confesses that really, “I have no idea! I’ve just slipped through. No one has said anything. I think maybe, if they go after people, it gives them a little bit of attention so they’ve backed off.”

I iconocolise stuff. I take stuff, pick at it and f**k with it. When I start messing with something, I see it as an homage. The worst dig at someone is to ignore them.

Gillette even got around a decree from Banksy himself, who commissioned him to paint a new picture (Ferris Wheel, the rides ruined and half buried in trash) for Dismaland. “Banksy emailed saying, ‘I put an official ban: no Mickeys. None.’ But when you say no to an artist, he’s not going to stick to it. That’s a green light.” Gillette slipped in a tiny mouse figure among the debris, it passed Banksy’s approval, and sold at the theme park.

Gillette might have smuggled a Mickey past Banksy but Banksy couldn’t evade him in Dismaland. At 1am in the ruined Cinderella castle, he and Hassold were asked “if we’d met ‘The Princess’ yet. It was just us in there and the workers, and he was the only guy without a security jacket on.” Although too awestruck to speak to the great man himself — “We messed up,” Hassold laughs — a picture they’ve seen since confirms it was the artist who simultaneously imitates and inspires Gillette. But maybe they’ll have another chance. Bansky has been invited to Gillette’s show, providing him with the perfect opportunity for a decade-old revenge, and the ultimate flattery: sneak his own work into the show, and Gillette Gillette.

Jeff Gillette’s Post-Dismal is at Lawrence Alkin Gallery, WC2 (020 7240 7909, lawrencealkingallery.com) from tomorrow until July 23

@franklymccoy

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout